Tiktok, fried egg sweets, and a tropical bear called a kinkajou. You may think these three things have little to do with each other.
But in the case of Simon Nova, of Gateshead, they helped to skyrocket his small autistic-run business to success after unexpected viral video fame.
The 33-year-old, took to social media to market his business, with a presence on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok.
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One day Simon was scrolling through TikTok when he came across a video of an American woman feeding sweets to a tropical bear called a kinkajou. Kinkajous, also known as “honey bears” are native to the rainforests of Central and South America. With a diet of mostly high-sugar fruits, kinkajous are uniquely able to digest candy sweets.
Simon sent a message to Alex, the lead zookeeper at Kinkatopia in Boca Raton, Florida, asking if he could send some UK sweets to the kinkajous. He said: “I wasn’t expecting anything from it. I just thought it would be nice to see them eating my sweets.”
He sent a box of his products to Florida, and one morning a few weeks later, Simon woke up to 1,600 notifications.
Over 3 million people viewed the original three-minute TikTok posted on the Kinkatopia page. Suddenly, Simon’s small Gateshead business was getting worldwide attention.
You can watch the TikTok here
Before becoming a viral sensation, Simon was getting a handful of orders a month, and only offered to ship within the UK. Suddenly, requests were coming in strong force from potential customers in America, and as far as the UAE.
Simon began to lay plans for how he would expand his business from the back room of his house to shipping worldwide.
The Bonnebon Confectionery Co. is now doing ten times the business it did before, and Simon has made running his online business into a full-time job.
As someone with autism, Simon found the typical nine-to-five job to be difficult. He said: “There’s a stigma around autism, I’m a normal person, I just have little different wires upstairs.
“Doing this business has allowed me to do something that I’m good at and I can make my own schedule. Although I might be behind my peers in life achievements, it gives me the opportunity of having the same quality of life as they do.”
Simon is open on his business’s social media channels about how his autism affects his day-to-day life as a business owner. He says it was really difficult in the beginning to be so candid about his life, especially getting over anxieties about how people online might scrutinise him.
However, social media has put Simon in front of an overwhelmingly supportive audience. He receives regular messages from individuals with autism and parents of autistic children who say that following Simon’s success gives them hope for the future.
Simon credits Alex at Kinkatopia for the boost that her videos gave his online business, as well as his ecommerce platform, EKM, for helping him to scale his business to cover the demand that comes with becoming an overnight viral sensation.
You can support Simon and The Bonnebon Confectionery Co. by visiting bonnebon.co.uk.
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