The average price for a diamond engagement ring hit an all-time high of $2,600 in 2005, according to a CNN study.

Step into Candy Village Shoppe in Manlius, N.Y., and it’s a different scene.

A finely cut diamond placed in a ring band goes for $12.95.

And you can eat it, too.

That’s because Candy Village Shoppe holds a stock of Promise Me Chocolate rings and other jewelry, crafted from the hands and mind of Stacey VanWaldick, a former Syracuse University graduate student.

VanWaldick, founder and proprietor of Promise Me Chocolate, created her own line of chocolate jewelry at the Syracuse Community Test Kitchen (COMTEK) in SU’s South Side Innovation Center.

‘I guess I just started playing around with making molds and pouring the chocolate,’ VanWaldick said. ‘They were sort of crude-looking at first, but I kept refining. I thought there was potential there when I finally got them the way I wanted them. People liked them and the university started buying them for events, and from there I started thinking, ‘This could be a real thing.”

Her chocolate jewelry line did become a real thing with the help of Lynne Foster, product development director at COMTEK and Kathy Chappini, owner of Village Candy Shoppe.

Chappini attended a test kitchen showcase at COMTEK last year, and VanWaldick’s line of chocolate jewelry – emerald, diamond, oval and heart-shaped gems, rings, bonbons and truffles – caught her eye.

‘I said, ‘Let’s try that in my store,” Chappini said. ‘It’s a good venue for her, it helps get her business out there. It’s a unique product and a great seller.’

Chappini put Promise Me Chocolate on the shelves in Village Candy Shoppe in late December. Now, a little more than a month later, she has customers waiting for more product to come in.

‘We sold almost all of the product she brought in,’ Chappini said. ‘Once it comes in, I end up calling people to let them know – they wait for it.’

VanWaldick, an art and jewelry-making teacher at Oswego High School, got into the chocolate jewelry craft while studying jewelry making and metalsmithing at the Parsons School of Design in New York City. But it took her a while to get there.

‘I started out in fashion design, actually,’ VanWaldick said. ‘I took a jewelry course as an elective and I loved it. I loved working with my hands, I loved all of the possibilities with the metal.’

As much as she enjoyed the art, she never realized jewelry making was a viable career option.

‘It was though,’ she said. ‘I took one class – one elective – and I was totally hooked. I fell in love and I switched my major and that was that.’

VanWaldick credits her SU professors and the people at SSIC with helping to get her product off the ground. She told one of her professors about her chocolate jewelry and they brought her attention to SU’s test kitchen.

From there, the grind work began. With the help of Lynne Foster, COMTEK’s product development director, VanWaldicke found a co-packer and a chocolatier, who she describes as a ‘subcontractor of sorts.’ She provides him with her molds and tells him how she wants them, and he sells them to her. Foster helped with her business plan, price points, packing and marketing plan.

Even before she took business courses at SU’s Martin J. Whitman School of Management though, VanWaldick knew she wanted to be an entrepreneur.

‘I’ve just always wanted to have my own business,’ VanWaldick said. ‘I love the lifestyle of having a studio or little chocolate shop. As an artist, who wouldn’t want to sit in their studio all day and make things for people and earn a living?’

VanWaldick will be serving 150 to 200 of her requested chocolate jewelry samples at a bridal show in Skaneateles this weekend. She plans to expand her business to New York City eventually, she said, and perhaps elsewhere.

‘I feel like things are finally starting to come together,’ she said. ‘So as long as I can keep everyone’s interest, I’ll stay with it. I love designing. I love creating.’

Promise Me Chocolate products are available at the Village Candy Shoppe in Manlius, N.Y. They are FDA approved, of course.

blbump@syr.edu

Published on February 4, 2009 at 12:00 pm