We want to bring the amazing taste of Icelandic Puffin Eggs to the world with their unique combination of chocolate and liquorice. As well as the fabulous taste and colours of the all natural, hand made Northern Lights, peppermint candies. So far they have only been available in Iceland, a country of just 320,000 inhabitants but now we want to have them in these adorable savings bank tins that we will ship worldwide. Once you have finished your candies you can use the savings bank to save up for a trip to Iceland :)

We need to pay for our first consignment of 5,000 tins (minimum requirement) on the 25th June. So far we have been able to pay the deposit to get the souvenir savings banks made, but the rest has to be paid on the 25th June and then a few days later the customs taxes and the actual candies paid for. We don't make the candies ourselves. The Puffin Eggs are long time Icelandic favourites made by Kólus (Sambo) in Kópavogur, near Reykjavik, but are marketed to the Icelandic public under different names and packaging. The Northern Lights are made for us by hand, with no artificial ingredients by Svandis Kandis  in Selfoss in the south of Iceland.

We registered Island Treasures on the 1st March 2012 and had our first batch of 100 bags of Icelandic Puffin Eggs in 3 places for Easter 2013. One place in Reykjavik, Borgarnes and Ólafsvik each. Over the summer we expanded to 30 places that sold our souvenir candies and eventually had 4 types: Puffin Eggs, Northern Lights, Lava Sparks and Lava Pebbles. Over the winter as the tourist numbers decreased we introduced some special boxes for Icelandic business people where we provided the service of attaching their business card to the back of the boxes before we covered them in cellophane.

After one year, Island Treasures is still in business and growing each week. We have not yet been able to pay ourselves (myself Pauline and my 2 teenage sons) any wages as all our income has been going into buying more stock but we hope with the introduction of these new souvenir tins that we intend to market in other northern countries that have puffins and northern lights, that we will be able to employ a few staff. We have some fun ideas for more souvenir items which we hope to introduce later this year and next year.

We started this company with no financial backing. Both myself and my husband are disabled and our only source of income is minimal disability pension. We used our credit cards and got credit from some of the companies we were buying from and in June 2012 we got a small business grant from Vaxtasamningur Vesturlands a government association to help small businessess as they were so inspired by our idea of introducing souvenir candy into Iceland for the first time. This past month has been difficult financially as we have had to buy a lot of stock for the build up for the high tourist season, but many of our customers (large chain stores and government departments) don't pay us for a couple of months after we deliver, making cash flow very tight right now, hence the need to try to raise some capital through this site.

I will now break down our approximate budget in British Pounds/US dollars/AUS dollars as I am sure the Icelandic Krona will mean nothing to most of you :)

Deposit on 5,000 tins, already paid: £1,250/$1,800/AUS$1,900
Still to pay of 25th June £1,500/$2,300/AUS$2,300
Customs taxes to be paid around 30th June £500/$750/AUS$775
(Update 2nd June: I just noticed that I had forgotten to take into account the shipping cost :( which is going to be around US$3,400. So that means 1) I have to find that money too :) and 2) The price for these on offer here are almost wholesale prices. We estimate the shops in Iceland will be selling the for about 2.990Ikr, (£15 + shipping)so these are a great deal! Snap them up while you can :)  )

You can see the types of Icelandic souvenir candy we currently sell here: www.islandtreasures.biz and keep up to date on what we are doing on our facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/isltreasures

You can see the prototypes of the savings bank tins on this site. The are just missing the clear plastic window on the lid of the tin. The pictures are all around the tin with the list of ingredients on a sticker underneath the tin, so as not to spoil the beauty of the tin. Hopefully these beautiful tins will bring you many years of pleasure looking at them and encourage you to save up your pennies to enjoy a trip to Iceland or some other destination to go see some puffins or northern lights.

We would like to use pozible.com to let you pre-order cans of Puffin Eggs and/or Northern Lights. Each can costs 2,000Ikr plus 500Ikr postage world wide £10.70 + £2.70 = £13.40 (approx: US$20/AUS$21)

If you pre-order 2 cans plus postage £26 (Approx: US$40/AUS$42) you will get a free bag of Icelandic Lava Sparks - traditional Icelandic toffees wrapped in a red shell. 
If you pre-order 4 cans plus postage £49 (approx: US$74/AUS$76) you will get a free bag of Lava Sparks & Icelandic Lava Pebbles - traditional Icelandic liquorice toffee with a hint of chocolate in a black shiny shell.

If you pre-order 6 cans plus postage £71 (approx: US$107/AUS$110) you will get free 1 bag Lava Sparks, 1 bag Lava Pebbles + 2 small boxes of Icelandic Puffin eggs with your choice of words attched on the back before being wrapped in cellophane. One with the traditional puffin colony on it and the other with a fun picture with a golfer and a puffin puzzed over which white ball on the green is theirs.

If you pre-order 10 cans plus postage £105(approx US$159/AUS$163) you will get all of the above freebies plus a Tshirt of your choice showing either the northern lights or puffins.