Tiny candy distributor wins a spot on shelves of Wal-Mart

The story of entrepreneurs who want to sell through Wal-Mart is almost Biblical:Many are called, but few are chosen.

Julie Atlas Griego,who runs the tiniest of companies out of her home in Sparks,was among the 2 percent who are chosen.

Her products, an upscale candy bar with wrappers featuring scenes of Reno and Lake Tahoe and another bar featuring scenes of travel around the United States, won a spot in 10 Wal-Mart stores in northern Nevada.

The approval was anything but easy.

In fact, Griego says, she devoted 11 out of the 12 months her company has been in business to the effort to get into Wal-Mart.

She met with Wal-Mart district officials in Reno.

She filled out some paperwork.

She talked with product development executives.

She filled out more forms.

Buyers in Wal- Mart's corporate office sent even more forms.

Executives asked her to change her pricing three times.

Six times, Griego redesigned the box for her candy bars.

"There was a lot of waiting,"Griego says.

"No one tells you how to put a product on the market.

It is trial and error."

And her work is only beginning.

Griego is responsible for filling the displays of her candy bars in stores as distant as Winnemucca a 163-mile drive one way.

"I am in the top 2 percent in the world," she says."I will drive to Winnemucca a million times if I need to make Wal-Mart happy."

If the candy bars sell well in northern Nevada stores, Griego in six months can make her pitch for distribution in Wal-Mart stores in California.

In six more months, she can seek national distribution.

The potential for national distribution, she says, accounts for development of the Travel USA bar.

"When I get into Wal-Mart at a local level, I can go only so far," she says."I need to do a national bar."

Griego is working, too, to win a spot in northern Nevada Wal-Mart stores for a line of executive stationery she's rolling out next spring.

And because her J.Atlas Enterprises is owned by Griego and her kindergarten-aged daughter, Emily Rose, she's seeking designation of the firm as a woman-owned business, figuring that will help get her foot in retailers' doors.

Along with Wal-Mart, the candy is sold at shops at Reno-Tahoe International Airport as well as Walgreens, Scolari's and 7-Eleven stores.