Article: COVER STORY Swiss Colony's success more than sweets and cheese Monroe catalog company looks to new areas for growth, year-round sales

Swiss Colony may be the closest thing to Santa's workshop south of the North Pole.It's a place where lines of bakers stand at a conveyor, each placing a candy or a spritz of frosting on 80,000 gingerbread houses as they move past. In a room nearby, where the temperature is 100 degrees, 400,000 pounds of chocolate sits waiting to be turned into some of the 1,200 varieties of goodies the Swiss Colony bakers create each year.

"We're totally geared to what we have to produce at this time of year," says Arthur Bartsch, vice president of food operations, noting that the bakers worked 18 hours on Saturday to keep up with the rush.

The 72-year-old catalog company is the quintessential ...

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