IT’SUGAR Company Spotlight: Experiential Candy Retail

The internet can deliver a bag of candy by tomorrow. It cannot reproduce the moment a customer walks into a three-story store and finds a wall of color, oversized packaging, loud music, novelty gifts, and enough sugar to make restraint feel like somebody else’s hobby.

IT’SUGAR built a business around that gap. Founded in 2006 by Jeff Rubin, the Fort Lauderdale company operates more than 100 specialty candy stores across the United States and Canada, along with ecommerce and a developing wholesale channel. Its product is candy, but its operating thesis is experiential retail.

Ryan Nelson became CEO on October 6, 2026, after joining IT’SUGAR in 2023 and serving as president. The same day, Second Avenue Capital Partners announced an $8M senior secured revolving credit facility for working capital and incremental growth liquidity.

That timing makes IT’SUGAR worth a closer look. A new CEO and new borrowing capacity arrive as the retailer works to connect stores, licensed products, digital sales, wholesale distribution, and brand partnerships into one durable system.

What IT’SUGAR Actually Sells

IT’SUGAR sells bulk candy, giant-format packaging, novelty products, licensed brands, and its own branded assortments. Those categories are familiar. The presentation is not.

The company describes itself as a “retailtainer,” a useful word because it identifies the real job of the store. A physical location must offer something more memorable than a search box and two-day shipping. IT’SUGAR uses scale, humor, color, music, pop culture, and controlled excess to turn a routine purchase into a destination.

The clearest example is the company’s 24,000-square-foot, three-floor candy department store at American Dream in East Rutherford, New Jersey. That format is part shop, part stage, and part proof that a low-ticket product can support a high-attention environment when the environment itself earns the visit.

The Founder’s Idea Became a Retail Platform

Jeff Rubin founded IT’SUGAR in 2006 after building a career in the candy business. The original idea was not to make confectionery respectable. It was to give customers permission to enjoy something bright, funny, and slightly ridiculous without apologizing for it.

BBX Sweet Holdings, a subsidiary of BBX Capital, invested in IT’SUGAR in 2017 and backed expansion, including the American Dream flagship. BBX acquired the remaining minority interest in August 2023, making IT’SUGAR wholly owned.

The ownership structure gives IT’SUGAR access to a parent with operating and capital resources, but it also makes performance visible. BBX Capital reported $117.4M in IT’SUGAR trade sales for 2024, down from $122.2M in 2023, while comparable-store sales declined 10.4%. Those historical figures do not describe current 2026 performance. They do explain why inventory discipline, store economics, and channel expansion matter as much as spectacle.

Ryan Nelson Inherits an Execution Job

Ryan Nelson brings more than 25 years of retail experience to the CEO role. Before joining IT’SUGAR, he led direct-to-consumer work at Sugarfina, served as head of U.S. retail at Godiva, and began his career at KB Toys.

That background fits the operating puzzle in front of him. IT’SUGAR needs merchandising, pricing, customer experience, real estate, ecommerce, wholesale, and partnerships to reinforce one another rather than compete for attention and inventory.

The new $8M revolving credit facility adds liquidity for working capital and growth. It is not $8M of revenue or equity, and the announcement did not disclose pricing, maturity, covenants, borrowing-base mechanics, or how much has been drawn. Its importance is practical: a seasonal retailer needs inventory before it can sell it, and expansion consumes cash before new channels prove their rhythm.

Wholesale and Licensing Extend the Store

IT’SUGAR’s recent partnerships show how the brand can travel beyond its own leases. The company announced a curated assortment in nine CAMP locations, connecting its wholesale business with another experiential retailer. It has also promoted collaborations involving Warheads and Pudgy Penguins, using licensed culture to turn candy into a collectible and shareable product.

Those moves matter because a retail brand with physical personality can extend into wholesale without becoming anonymous. The challenge is preserving the humor and visual identity that make IT’SUGAR distinct while adapting assortment, pricing, and packaging to someone else’s shelf.

Ecommerce plays a different role. It makes the assortment available outside the store network and lets products circulate after a social post, collaboration, or vacation-store visit creates demand. The strongest version of the model is not stores versus online versus wholesale. It is each channel creating reasons for customers to encounter the others.

Resilience Is Part of the Story

IT’SUGAR filed for Chapter 11 protection in September 2020 after the pandemic disrupted mall traffic and store operations. The company emerged in June 2021 with BBX Sweet Holdings’ ownership restored, then became fully owned by BBX in 2023.

That history should not be polished into a motivational poster. It shows how exposed experiential retail can be when traffic disappears and occupancy costs remain. It also shows that the company has already had to renegotiate the relationship among leases, inventory, capital, and demand.

The current strategy is therefore less about proving that consumers still like candy. They do. The harder question is whether IT’SUGAR can allocate stores, inventory, partnerships, and working capital well enough to make delight repeatable and profitable.

Hiring Reveals the Operating Surface

IT’SUGAR’s careers portal remains active, although its current exact opening count could not be independently verified without the portal’s client-side application. The company’s LinkedIn page describes a workforce built around passionate, optimistic, and energetic people.

For operators considering the company, the useful signal is the range of systems behind the bright storefront. Specialty retail needs store leadership, merchandising, logistics, ecommerce, marketing, finance, real estate, wholesale execution, and customer experience to move together. The fun is visible. The coordination is the work.

What IT’SUGAR Signals for Experiential Retail

IT’SUGAR sits inside a larger retail argument. Commodity products do not automatically require commodity experiences. A familiar item can become a destination when assortment, environment, licensing, and cultural timing create a reason to visit.

That advantage is real, but it is operationally demanding. Big stores create theater and fixed costs. Licensed products create relevance and complexity. Wholesale creates reach and margin questions. Ecommerce creates convenience and a different competitive set.

IT’SUGAR’s next chapter will be judged by whether Ryan Nelson’s team can make those tradeoffs work together. The company does not need to convince people that candy is fun. It needs to convert that obvious truth into store traffic, repeat purchases, wholesale relevance, and disciplined growth. In retail, the wrapper catches the eye. The operating system decides whether the business gets another turn.