Bergland woman makes her

Ken Johnston
Editor

The ratings for The Shopping Channel likely spiked in the Rainy River District on Friday when Erin Rencher of Erin’s Candy in Bergland, took to the airwaves.
Rencher travelled to Toronto last week after a three week marathon of production for the show. After arriving she met with the production manager and discovered that she was going to be put to work the night before she went on the air.
“I thought they would have the set all put together, but they wanted me to do that,” said Erin. She said she worked late that evening getting things ready. When she took to air the set was filled with her candy and some of the candy was displayed in the frame of a Christmas tree.
She said they also had to teach her how the show worked. “I had to learn what camera to look at and when.”
While she said Monday, her first spot, at 10:30 a.m. Friday was the worst, she pulled it together with the help of Hugh Wilson. He said she did okay the first spot, but he coached her and got her right up to full speed.
In her first spot she worked with host Lynn St. Dennis, who sampled Erin’s products on air; truly a fringe benefit that the cameramen were longing for. As the day progressed she was on the air, live, three more times and she said that each spot went better than the one before to the point where she was comfortable enough to feed some of her candy to the cameramen on air.
While she does not know the final sales figures, she said her buyer was impressed with the results from the first day. “We will not know final results for a few more days as some of the segments were taped so they could be played later for the west coast viewers.”
Erin said that her candy was such a hit that other vendors offered to trade their goods for some of hers. “One guy offered to trade me olive oil for candy, another for juice products.”
Erin took her friend Bobby Hilke, who was originally from International Falls and now lives in Michigan, with her. “I had to say she was my executive assistant to get her in,” said Erin. Later in the day Hilke even got on t.v. as a sampler of some juice products.
“It was really fun and overwhelming all at once. The spots go by so fast,” said Erin who just got home Monday. Will she take a break now? “I am hoping for (some time) with my kids today and tomorrow it starts going again.” She is taking orders for Christmas and is really busy already. “I don’t expect it to slow down until after Valentine’s Day.”
The Shopping Channel has invited her back to sell more product for that occasion in January.