European-Trade Tour Will Include Gifts of Good Taste

Blend 3 ounces of chocolate with a sprinkle of diplomacy and the sweet results are 14 miniature replicas of the Berlin Wall suitable for gift giving.

Candy maker John Johnson made the white chocolate confections embossed with graffiti as presents for protocol expert Dorris Boyar to give foreign business leaders.

Boyar was one of 28 Americans chosen to represent the United States on a 15-day trade tour of Warsaw, Budapest, Vienna and Berlin. The group, which departed Oct. 26, will arrive in Germany Nov. 10 in time for the first anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The tour is sponsored by the Citizen Ambassador Program, a program that promotes scientific, technical and professional exchanges, Boyar said.

Gift giving is very much a part of diplomatic protocol, Boyar said. But she wanted something more than the standard pens and other promotional items to take with her for the German celebration. About two weeks ago, Boyar called Johnson at his A & J Sweet Treats shop in Mission Valley to solicit his help.

Johnson, a former computer consultant turned candy maker, said he mulled over the request and came up with the 3-ounce replicas of the Berlin Wall for Boyar to present to select government and commerce leaders in Germany.

There is more to the trip than an effort to drum up business in the new entrepreneurial environments in Eastern Europe, Boyar said.

“Our main purpose is good will and giving suggestions to business leaders if they want them,” she said. Her role specifically is to encourage the fledgling entrepreneurs not to repeat the past mistakes of American businesses who suffered because they did not have a grasp of foreign cultures, Boyar said. “There are too many business people going abroad and making mistakes which are culturally damaging,” she said.

Boyar said she began offering one-on-one training to corporate executives on foreign business and social protocol about three years ago. The intensive training sessions are held shortly before a company’s representative embarks on a trip to a particular country.

She draws her information from her widespread business travels, from reading trade and cultural journals and protocol training courses in Washington from a firm that teaches U.S. diplomats, she said.

“I am trying to get companies to send their sales representatives on a public relations trip first before they start trying to sell their product. Many foreign companies don’t like doing business with Americans because of their bottom-line approach. They want to get to know us a little first.”

For business people, getting to know one another often means entertaining at formal dinners, Boyar said. But sensitivity to foreign business and social practices goes beyond learning which piece of silverware to use, she said.

This trip puts the emphasis on learning about culture and extending the hand of friendship, she said. The gifts Johnson has provided will show her hosts that a small American entrepreneur cared enough about them to custom-make a gift to commemorate an important historical event in East Berlin.

Johnson said he made a larger replica of the Berlin Wall for his store window after the wall fell last year. He has also created replicas of the San Diego Convention Center, the aircraft carrier Enterprise, and he’s now working on a Persian Gulf display.

“This has been my month for donating things,” Johnson said with a laugh. He donated turtle-shaped lollipops to a school PTA, and a door prize for a high school program.

When Boyar called, “she caught me at a good time, Johnson said. He had already made a Berlin Wall replica last year, so it wasn’t like creating a product from scratch, he said. Plus “it was for a good cause.”

But, like so many of Johnson’s creations, the wall, the convention center and the aircraft carrier do not come out of the 2,000 standard candy molds he uses for his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle confections and holiday treats. He uses cake pans and free-form carving to create special orders, he said.

Johnson, 39, did not start out as a candy maker. He has a math and accounting background, and, until about three years ago, he designed computer systems. He created job cost systems for concrete contractors and designed computerized accounting programs.

But the candy-making ventures of his wife, Arveal, kept eating up more and more of his time, he said. Arveal, a billing supervisor at the UC San Diego Medical Center, began her part-time home business for Christmas of 1987. “Every holiday, I’d have to take off three weeks to make and deliver candy,” he said.

Finally, Johnson gave up his consulting business and opened A & J Sweet Treats, because “more people are interested in candy than the computer business. They understand candy.”

Now, “I’ve found I can be just as creative in candy as with computers,” he said. “There’s no limit to what we can create.”

With the help of two employees, Johnson creates corporate logos in chocolate and an assortment of chocolate baseball gloves, rabbits and roses. Most recently, he was commissioned to produce a replica of California for Sen. Pete Wilson’s birthday party at the San Diego Convention Center.

The 25-inch piece was inscribed with a salute to Wilson’s gubernatorial ambitions: Pete Wilson, Governor 1990.

Johnson is swamped with Halloween orders, but he is making plans to produce a series of blank Berlin Walls for the Nov. 10 celebration of the wall’s collapse, he said. Customers can have them inscribed with their own sayings instead of the Bird of Peace dove motif and “JFK was here,” he said. Each comes with a milk chocolate pick for chipping away at the wall.