The Maple Leaf Rag

Today, Sunday, was a rainy, dreary day here in Toronto. For some fun in the afternoon, we decided to make caramel apples. Since it's almost Halloween, and these apples are a delicious Halloween treat, we gathered up all of the things we needed and whipped them up in a very short time. 

Depending on your tastes, you can add or subtract items from the list. We used:

Apples - uncut, with the skin

Wooden sticks - a chopstick works perfectly, we broke our chopsticks in half. You could use the flat Popsicle sticks too. 

Caramel - the little cubes in wrappers that you buy, take the wrappers off

Mini M&Ms - the tiny, coloured pieces of chocolate

Coconut - sweet 

Walnut bits - you can use peanuts or any kind of nut that you like

Brown sugar and cinammon

Score bits - little chunks of toffee

Reese's chocolate chips - mini 

White chocolate shavings

Brown sugar

How we made them: 

You need a double boiler for these or, I suppose, a rice maker. Unwrap the caramel chunks and put them in the top part of the double boiler. If you have a steel pan that fits in the top of your rice maker/steamer you could try that. I know many people who only have a rice maker and use it for just about everything. The steam from the double boiler or steamer will heat the caramel and melt it. Make sure that the caramel is totally melted and smooth. 

Push the stick into the core of the apple and roll it around in the melted caramel. Use a spoon to cover the apple in caramel, making sure it has an even coat all over it. 

Twist the stick to keep the caramel from dripping off and dip the apple into whatever extras that you want on it. You can dip one part in the M&Ms, another part into the walnuts and so on. 

Put the finished apple on a tray covered with some wax paper into your refrigerator. The apple won't stick to the wax paper. Once it's set, enjoy a sweet, moderately healthy treat. Hey, at least the apple is healthy! 

I hope you enjoy this recipe and, as always, thanks for reading!

Many of my friends are involved in 'International Trading'. We call it marketing, here in Canada, plain old selling. While China has a huge population, the market for manufactured products is much larger outside of China.

China itself is a large market for certain products but one has to consider the differences between selling within China and selling outside of China. How do you market things outside of China? From what I see, not many companies know how this is done. Sure, you can try to sell things through a hotmail account or sign up for a website with Alibaba but I don't think you'll have much luck. Certainly not in a business to business situation, and probably not in a retail situation. Retail means selling to a person as opposed to a company. 

Here are some steps that you or your company can use to market your products all over the world. Good luck! For more information, contact me personally. I'm a writer but I've been in sales for most of my adult life. 

1. Get a website of your own. If I am looking for something, I sure don't go to Alibaba and look. I search on Google and go to a website that has information about the product that I'm looking for. Make sure it's a .com site. Make sure it's easy to remember. Make sure your English is perfect on the site and that everything to do with the site is professional, clean and polished. 

2. Answer EVERY email in perfect English. Don't try to figure out what the person wants to know, ask a professional native English speaker. If you speak English with a bit of an accent, use the telephone. International rates are cheap and a personal call goes a long way to making the customer feel secure.

3. Get your product into the hands of the consumer. Spend some money and find a company that will market your products in the North American market or the European market. Look for reliable distributors. If you sell a certain product, make sure that the distributor is familiar with marketing that product. Look for professional reps, not discount reps. 

4. Ensure that everyone that is involved with the customer is proficient in English. If the customer senses that they are dealing with a company that doesn't understand their needs, they will take their business elsewhere. Competition is fierce in China and all over the world. If you stand out, your customer will remember. 

5. Explore the market. Get to know who is doing the same thing that you are doing. Find out how they market their products. Don't assume that you're the first company to do whatever it is that you are doing. 

6. Have one of your trusted employees get a job with your competitor. Let your competitor teach your employee how the business is run. Then, take the employee back into your company as a trainer for your other workers. 

7. There are trade fairs all over North America and Europe. Spend a bit of your advertising budget and get your products into the hands of the people who actually use them.

8. Investigate the give-away or promotion market. There are television sales networks in North America who are looking for products to offer to their customers. Knowing your market in North America will help you sell here. 

Thanks for reading.