Candy Industry Senior Editor Liz Parker recently chatted with Amos Ma, president and founder, Amos Sweets, about consumers trends in the novelty candy category—and how the company likes to set the trends—as well as what’s next for the company.

Liz Parker: What are some current consumer trends in the novelty category?

Amos Ma: What never changes is that consumers [want to be] happy and healthy. So, when we do candy, we [try] to bring the value of happy and heart health to the consumer. For Amos candy, we do two different categories for candy: innovative or novelty candy that brings happiness to the consumer, and nutritional, functional candy that brings health value to the consumer.

So for novelty candy, how to make consumer be happy is quite important—enjoying family life during the festivals every year, and sharing gifts with each other, so with seasonal culture and premium quality is the traditional trends which are always going on at present and in the future.

Besides that, as the producer, we also could create trends for the consumer. For example, Apple came came out with the original smartphones. With Amos 4D, we made a normal gummy with a 3D shape, such as a gummy block. With Amos Peelerz, we made a fruit shape like a mango, that consumers can peel, and with Amos TastySounds, we made a lollipop that consumers can suck on, and their ears can listen to music by bone conduction. All of these are new trends which consumers didn’t have, but we created them since it could bring happiness and surprise to the consumer.

LP: How does Amos Sweets work to keep up with current consumer interests, as well as taste trends?

AM: It’s important to keep in contact with consumers. Innovation can be consistent or can go on for a longer period of time. We keep in close contact with consumers to track what they are interested in, in terms of candy.

I always go to the grocery store or supermarket and see what is trending—for example, if a promotion such as sampling is going on, I watch to see what consumers are interested in.

For example, we have a probiotic gummy in one famous member’s club in China: #1 in sales for five years. For the first two years, we had a sugar probiotic gummy, and then when we found that Sam’s Club members were quite interested in sugar-free, we changed them to be sugar-free. Consumers care about the label, the ingredients, and less artificial ingredients, so we cut out some artificial ingredients, and now the consumers care about environment protecting, so we started to use recyclable packages which are more environmentally friendly.

LP: We’ve written about your 4D Gummy Blocks before as well as the TastySounds Audio Lollipops. How did you come up with the idea for both of these, specifically the lollipops?

AM: So obviously China is different from the U.S. and Europe—there, consumers are more friendly about candy. Chinese consumers are more negative about candy—they think too much sugar is not so good, especially for kids. 

Because of this, we were forced to innovate. So we tried 3D [gummies], and different shapes, like gummy blocks, with the outside looking like a 3D apple or peach. In this way, we have to make ourselves different, which is our competitive advantage.

Shenzhen city, where Amos’ head office is located, is the most developed on electronic products, so we use the bone conducting electronic products combine with music and our lollipop, to create the TastySounds lollipop.

LP: Do you have any recent candy launches you can share, or anything upcoming for 2024?

AM: Yes. We have the second generation of our 4D (3D + Delicious) gummies coming out, such as our Goldfish gummy, with 360 degree 3D, which was highly respected at ISM Germany two weeks ago. We have also just launched another fish, Carp, at Sam's Club in China during Chinese New Year.

We are thrilled to announce the successful launch of Amos Peelerz gummy mango on TikTok Shop, Amazon, and various brick-and-mortar stores. We are delighted with its robust sales and the positive feedback from consumers. In several retailers, nationwide stock shortages have occurred due to the sudden surge in sales.

Also this year, we’ll hold an important opening ceremony for our new and big factory at the beginning of March, so we will have much more capacity and could serve much more customers over the world especially in the U.S. This year is also the 20^th anniversary of Amos Food Group so we will do lots of events for consumers.