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Cinzia Forbes and her husband, Michael Forbes, ran a small olive oil distribution business in Sarasota for more than a decade that was, in their words, mostly a money-losing hobby.
The couple was set to give it up last year, but in the process they learned that listening to customers can pay.
“We were trying to get out,” says Michael Forbes, “but we had so many people telling us to stay in.”
The company, PaneOlio, sells a variety of olive oils online, at several Sarasota-Bradenton-area restaurants and at 10 farmers markets on the Gulf Coast, from Fort Myers to Tampa. The business also has a partnership with the “Duke and the Doctor,” a nationally syndicated health radio show. Those sales outlets fostered a small cult-like following, and several customers asked the owners not to quit.
So last year the couple — she's a native of Italy, he's American-born — recruited Cinzia Forbes's brother, Pino Testini, to move to the States from Italy to help sell the olive oil. Testini is familiar with the products because the extended Testini family makes the olive oil back in their home village in northern Italy.
Testini has led a transformation at PaneOlio. Sales over the last year, says Michael Forbes, have doubled, to around $200,000, and the company projects it could reach $1 million in sales within five years. Cinzia Forbes says the farmers market business model, where the company licenses others to sell PaneOlio products, has big potential. She envisions the olive oil being sold one day at farmers markets everywhere from Florida to Indiana to South Carolina.
“Our goal is to get as close as we can to the customer,” Cinzia Forbes tells Coffee Talk. “Olive oil is all about tasting.”
This story has been updated to correct Michael Forbes' name.
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