continued. . . 

Navigating the finer points of a world run by grown-ups proved priceless for the burgeoning business wunderkind. Sammy not only diligently observed (and absorbed) his father’s business skills, but he cultivated his own. When he was just five, he was already buying and selling toys in front of his father’s warehouse using the profits to purchase snacks. “Business was always in my blood,” he says. “It was a way of life, buying and selling, always working hard.” And always thinking, even more than a street-smart Brooklyn kid should. When Sammy was a second grader he sold hamburgers to school-bound hungry classmates. As a teen, he sold baseball cards in the halls of his strict private school. “I never had to ask my parents for a dime,” he smiles. “I always knew how to find a product that someone else wanted. It’s in the blood.” After a year of reflection, Sammy opted out of college in favor of getting down to business. Literally. “I have plenty of friends who went to college,” he says, “and they’re still looking for their place in the world. I already knew my place and it was business.”

In 1997, at the age of 18 and with the backing of his parents, Sammy opened a retail store specializing in high-end confectionery baskets, mainly targeted to corporate accounts. Perhaps it comes as no surprise that the operation flourished from the get-go. Without a hint of gloat, Sammy confides, “I expected to do well. I worked hard and I was nice to people.” Business was so sweet within two years he expanded to four locations – Brooklyn, Great Neck, Deal (NJ), and L.A., each locale carefully chosen because of its considerable wealth and substantial Jewish population, a key client base.

By this point, the Queens-bred Donna Cohen had entered Sammy Imani’s life; she too descending from an entrepreneurial household. Through her childhood, Donna often accompanied her father, a jeweler, on buying trips to Asia. Not only did she survey firsthand how to operate a business, but she offered her father her own two cents on design allowing ample creative juices to flow. Indeed, it was Donna’s concept to source serveware to wholesale since the platters she designed to hold the confections were so favorably received. (A typical candy platter retails for $100.) “Clients who came into the stores loved the trays and bowls so we started to sell them without candy,” Donna notes.

continued . . . .