Nick Lindauer’s Hot Sauce Blog really is the shizznit. It’s a daily read for us, and we can certainly admit to having a little blog envy when it comes to how well his board is set up. Since Nick efforts to highlight good stuff in the world of hot & spicy fare, we thought it would be nice to highlight his blog and ask him to talk a little bit about his business, love of hot sauce, and all things blog-licious.

Background:
Sweat ‘N Spice started in 2001 as a college project - a website built out of the pure love of hot sauce. Back then there were only a select handful of places to buy hot sauces online and even fewer places for hot sauce related information. Subscribing to Chile Pepper Magazine and Fiery-Foods Magazine was the primary source of information for most chile heads, especially those in states like Oregon or Washington, locations not known for a ‘hot’ food culture.

Then, one year, the wife ran into a customer service issue with an online hot sauce retailer. The site will remain unnamed, but needless to say the customer service was so bad that it caused me to take a step back and think. I loved hot sauce enough and already had a huge collection of my own, why not try selling some online?

Shortly thereafter, Sweat ‘N Spice was transformed from an information portal to an ecommerce site. Our starting inventory was a mere 30 bottles that I picked out based on my own sauce preferences but quite quickly our inventory doubled, then tripled and today we now have over 1,000 different hot products.

The mission for Sweat ‘N Spice was quite clear: sell only GOOD hot sauces & related products and go above and beyond the customer service expectations.

We’ve since moved from our starting location in Oregon to New York, NY and may shortly be opening up a store here in Manhattan. Making the transition from online to brick & mortar is a large step and one we want to do well with. Our store plans are top-secret for now, but we’ve toured many hot shops (often incognito) to better understand what works and what doesn’t.

Back to the questions at hand….

Best Selling Products (in order):

• Frostbite Hot Sauce
• Blair’s 3AM
• Magma Hot Sauce
• Dave’s Ultimate Insanity Sauce
• 357 Mad Dog Hot Sauce Collectors Edition w/Bullet

Any dry Spells?

We don’t. Sweat ‘N Spice is not about making profit. Without sounding schmaltzy we’d rather take a loss and still deliver the best hot sauces we can find then count pennies.

Products not selling?

With every new product brought on, there is a worry that it won’t sell, especially with smaller manufacturers that don’t have the marketing or customer base that the larger guys have. And let’s face it, some products don’t sell – but that’s where the Hot Sauce Blog comes in. If we’re faced with a product that’s not selling, we’ll give it away to reviewers and readers. We’ll often throw in extra bottles with customer orders as well.

Older then 2 years?

Goodness no! Well, unless your talking about collector’s bottles like Blair’s Caldera or other items along those lines. Our product life cycle is never more then 6-8 months, once a bottle has been around longer then that it is rotated off the shelf and earmarked for the big hot sauce bottle heaven in the sky.

Inventory growth?

More please! Our initial inventory was only 30 different types of hot sauce and has now grown to well over 1,000 & we’re constantly adding new products.

Competitor Comparison?

We try not to compare ourselves to anyone, so that we can remain different and unique in our own right. We don’t have the nifty custom wooden crates that MoHotta does, nor do we have our own hot sauces like FireGirl does. What we have though is an intense love for hot sauces and we do carry more of the ‘smaller’ manufacturers then other sites. Often Sweat ‘N Spice serves as a stepping stone for the little guys before the major distributors pick them up. And we handle the products & orders ourselves, unlike some of the other online sites out there.

Eat the profits?

Of course! If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be in this business. In fact, that is the reason I started the Hot Sauce Blog. The blog originally started on the Sweat ‘N Spice website but soon took on it’s own personality and I made the decision to separate the two. That decision allows the separation of business and pleasure. Also, with the addition of the reviewers, the blog now serves as a testing platform for products to be added to Sweat ‘N Spice.

Vital Stats:
Nick Lindauer
nick@sweatnspice.com
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Sweat ‘N Spice Hot Sauces®
www.sweatnspice.com
300 West 55th Street
Unit 14-Y
New York, NY 10019
toll free. 866.99.SWEAT

The Hot Sauce Blog
www.hotsauceblog.com
If it’s not here, it’s not hot enough!

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