Why FMCG is Totally Broken For Black and Working Class Founders and How to Fix it - Asher Flowers

0:00First started Rogue for about six months, I was on antidepressants at one point and it was just so overwhelming. in it was just constantly on my mind like three you know barely slept or whatever you'd be making and just sort of selling and making and selling and making and selling i'm not bothered about the whole grocers for like five six years now being there got been no interest to me whatsoever you've got one product to focus on and i think it makes it harder for a brand owner because they're like i'm just going to keep beating the same drum and maybe you get bored working class people in the uk that just do not have access to making these businesses a reality because they'd have to get Bangalore.

0:33I think the VCs and angel investors really need to look at what are they investing in. Hello there and welcome to Hungry. Hungry is the podcast for the next wave of challenger food and drink brands looking to pour gasoline all over their growth. Each week we'll interview successful founders, thought leaders, unpack their lessons and provide you with a toolkit to scale super fast. I am Dan Pope, I am your host and without further ado let's get started. Hello there people and listeners of the Hungry Podcast. Today I am super, super, super excited to welcome my great mate Asha Flowers to the podcast.

1:13Yeah, probably the grooviest, coolest name in FMCG, mate. So, yeah, Asha and I met many moons ago. He was co-founder of a brand called Rogue, who did these just absolutely unreal, like face-meltingly banging jams. I think I remember eating this Scotch bonnet jam, whatever the jam was at Speciality. It just blew my socks off. So, so good. Did incredibly well that building it out of his parents' home in the valleys in Wales and single handedly managed to get listings at Sainsbury's Waitrose. But unfortunately had to close the business due to the ramifications from post-COVID, cost-of-living crisis, and the Ukraine war.

2:03But it's now very much risen from the ashes. I had to slip that in, mate. It's back on his feet and it's building, going again, with a tequila brand called Broken Barrier. It has left the wonders of Hackney and gone back to the valleys to build this, which I just think is a sick story. and I'm really intrigued to pull and tease at that today. So, mate, thank you so much for coming on. Super appreciate it. Super appreciate it. Thank you for having me. What a weird way of saying it. Super appreciate it. No, I super appreciate the opportunity. So thank you, Dan. It's a pleasure to be a part of this, especially with the big names you've got on.

2:43Oh, mate. No, no, it's all good. Absolute pleasure. So I want to talk about, so my other favourite black Welshman is Jamie Jones. who I think we'll both know he's for people listening he's like the greatest DJ of all time I must say um and I've seen him countless times and I've been for pretty much every podcast every newsletter I ever write every LinkedIn post is listening to some form of Jamie Jones loads of coffee in here Tame O Bosch like in flow state um but I was listening to a um an interview he did he was actually in brazil and after a set and the interviewer was asking some really interesting questions and one was like what it was like to be a black guy growing up in wales and trying to do electronic music because like those three things kind of you know don't make sense if it's as as possible like just being brutally honest i'd love to know what you're again building challenge your brand being a black guy growing up in wales like it's a much harder path than someone in our industry which is shrouded with pretty much everyone went to a private school um what did that feel like growing up as as a as a black guy in wales talk to me about that yeah i mean i was very fortunate like i had a really good um i had a really good you know my mom's brilliant in terms of very fortunate there it's a very like safe-ish place to grow up um it wasn't necessarily like it just started a bit further away from everything i suppose you know in terms of like the london bubble and stuff of like being able to just sort of have meetings and even being back there now with the tequila um you know it would be so much easier to just be back in london full time whether you're hitting up customers daily investors wherever um but i think what it teaches you as well um it's just sort of like it's to me it's not really about the racial aspect of growing up in Wales I think because there's so many people who are working class similar to myself you're all sort of in it together but that becomes like a secondary thing you're kind of all you know there's a bit more like almost equality versus when I moved to London that's when I really saw the differences in terms of like I call it naive but like where I was in Wales there was no sort of middle class or sort of like some people can do something that some people can't or sort of even that much massive prejudice it was just like you're all welsh you're all in it together you sort of play rugby for your school you play rugby for your local team or whatever and that and that was the sort of who you are i used to work in brecon of all places yeah yeah yeah i used to drive down to murphur you know that the other well that's what people on the roads there drive so fucking fast me it's mental i was like in my little perch i 27 like oh my god i'm out of the place they drive they probably razz it don't they that in ways so what's let's go into the welsh um welsh piece because that's super interesting about the working class and kind of in it together um i i spoke to ed williams from candy kittens who's a welsh guy i don't know why i said it like that um but awful welsh accent but he he was saying there's a kind of like a camaraderie and kind of piss taking that gave him a superpower when he set up the brand because it meant when he when he could go back to wales like they were like it wasn't like oh ed ed from candy kittens it was just like ed me old mate from from playing rugby what did growing up in wales or being welsh how do you think that's giving you giving you an unfair advantage when you've gone into to launch a brand oh i think massively sometimes i mean really so yeah yeah in terms of and i'll give you two examples that aren't us if you look at the fastest growing drinks brand in the uk right now is au vodka in swansea doing flavored vodka if you look at for example craft beer as well is like tiny rebel who are based down in newport and cardiff way that because you're out of it you almost have this thing of going like well this is the handout these are the cards i've been dealt so i've just got to figure out like how am i going to get this product to market you don't care either so much about sometimes the London bubble of, are you in Whole Foods?

7:05Are you in Planet Organic? Is this the sort of thing that you're doing and you haven't got this sort of like idea, like, oh, I've got to be in those places. You also create brands that you know that would work in, whether it's Middlesbrough, Cardiff, Edinburgh, wherever you have this idea that you want to sell to people that are more similar to yourself than potentially chasing like 18 delis across you know northwest london you have that that sort of a different mentality and i think it keeps you quite like authentic and grounded because you know that you know nobody's that bothered back in in wales in terms of like no one rates you higher because you're doing well in your career like we had a guy who used to support us as a mentor and his nickname was called like Jerry Coca-Cola because he was managed to Coca-Cola.

7:58That was like, and that's what he was known for like 20 something years. So yeah, it keeps you grounded and it just keeps you, like it makes you play a game that is slightly different. Mate, I love that. So the one thing, and I wax lyrical about it, and I know we've talked about this, is getting out of the London bubble. And ultimately there's a common thing, I can't remember who told me it, but it was, it's ultimately a lot of challenger brands are middle-class founders. And I'm, you know, I'm part of this problem. Middle-class founders creating middle-class products for middle-class problems.

8:30And that's why they can't get out of London. And that's because, you know, someone in Middlesbrough or Brecon isn't interested in a, necessarily like interested in a prebiotic mushroom chaga rat's piss coffee. Do you know what I mean? That, you know, they're not interested in that. So that's what these brands struggled to get out of London because it's middle-class people creating middle-class products for middle-class problems. The reframe here, which is super interesting, AU Vodka, Tiny Rebel, working-class people creating working-class, well, not necessarily working-class products. No, they're not working-class.

9:07They're not working-class. Oh, they're not working-class. No, no, no. But like, I know you're in. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know, because he wasn't an AU Vodka guy. He was like, he's minted. Yeah, yeah, yeah. yeah but anyway maybe maybe i'm getting going slightly wrong there but what i mean is being more privy or having a better understanding of their market by not being in london do you mean so it allowed them to create a product that was more mainstream applicable to as you say being sold in middlesbrough versus um just being just being in london i think that's so interesting how you could do that because i always think if someone was to do their npd meeting in wales wherever you grow up suddenly you'd be like okay that changes our strategy because if you're not in london you start thinking more households hi there guys super super quick one um i write a weekly newsletter called hungry friday feast it goes live at 8am every friday i'm pouring my soul into this bad boy it's probably my favorite creative endeavor i've ever done i basically pick apart all the biggest lessons all the biggest learnings from all the wonderful guests and throw it into a feast or a newsletter we've got over a thousand two hundred subscribers come and join the party i'm going to put a link in the show notes it's right at the top and subscribe and if you are already a subscriber please just forward it on to a friend do the amount of favor it would mean the world to me anyway back to the old episode boys and girls i don't think it's a middle class thing i think there are what i think is a funding thing i think there's a big difference.

10:43And the reason why I say that, for example, one of the biggest brands, a couple of biggest brands I aspire to in building something as similar to as I can is Lucky saying the way they've gone about stuff is incredible, being so focused, how they've built a community. They're one of my all-time favorite brands. I don't think it's necessarily a middle-class thing at all. I think sometimes that we can have so many brands that are nice to haves, but they don't necessarily have a solution to anything, or they think that, oh, we've had this data in the US, so we know that this is going to work here, or there's stuff like even, you know, Manny Life.

11:24Manny Life sells all over the country. I don't think it's necessarily a middle-class thing at all. What I think is, is like, do you actually have a great brand? And have you got the patience to build a great brand, or are you building a brand that's basically just trying to raise more and more and more and more investment? Now, there are so many great products that come out of London in terms of what Pippin Nut did to Nut Butters, what Money Life did as well, or what Lucky Sait are doing to alcohol-free beer. You can go really deep on that, but I know that there are a lot of maybe more, you know say brands that have got access to more funding and that can be almost this thing of going like you could spend four years, you've wasted a couple of extra hundred thousand pounds or even millions and you go, a brand doesn't necessarily work as much as you thought it would be, as much as you thought it would.

12:23So I think that can sometimes be more of a problem. Is there an example of that? Yeah, like for example, I don't walk into after all the years of say kombucha and this is no this is no disrespect to any kombucha brand if i don't i haven't walked into a off license in wales and ever seen kombucha like i just haven't and like there's you know there's obviously a market for this it's growing for it there are certain trends that come from the states that i don't necessarily think are reflective of a uk audience either um well also it's like it's like the states isn't we're very similar we're wildly different and also one one you get whole foods listing in the in the states that's 250 stores you get whole foods listing in the uk that's seven stores so just because something when you get one state in you get california is 1.7 times bigger than the uk so if you get one state alone you're almost getting double the market just in that one state the weather's the weather's a method massive of difference i was talking to jack scott from um dash it's like why does um why didn't hard salsa really work in the uk well one la you know sorry not la california is much bigger than um than than the uk one two the weather is warm there people are going to want to have hard salsa in if you're having a barbecue or sat on the beach it's way more weather here i'm not being funny it's november right now we're recording this it's absolute shithouse out there i do not the last thing i want is is a is a hard seltzer as much i do like them in this weather so the frequency of consumption is way less i want a warm guinness right now that's what i want do you know me um it's not bright now it's quite early but it's not a proper alky but the you know what i mean i think there's there's a lot in a lot in the in the differences um so but let let let's go back to um what we're talking about kind of this this welsh um upbringing so to talk to me through that so whereabouts did you live was it in a in a small um village what did your kind of early years look like yeah so i grew up in this i was born in the valleys then my mum uh moved us up to a town called halford west in pembrokeshire so it was really like by the beaches it was the county town so the biggest sort of the capital of that county and it was 10 000 people so it had as many people as like i think it had less people than well yeah way less people than even hackney or somewhere like that so it was really really quite small place i remember when greg's opened there there was a queue around the outside of the shop and around the corner so it was quite like it was last to get a few things up there and then there was also a thing where it was like i would be in school and there was always this rumor that KFC was one day going to open up in Pembroke Dock which was like a 30 minute drive away and you had to like pay to go over a bridge and all of this sort of stuff but it was like the thing that everyone was looking forward to in my year so it was really like it was really distant and it always felt like really like we were so many years and years and years behind but when things would get there you know you'd know that they were like household brands.

15:38And I think that's what a lot of brands could work on is going like, does this work? You're in the same country. It's either going to be easier to export, or you could actually start building a rate of sale in like an area like that, where you can really test, do people actually want this sort of product? Because I think something like 50 % of the UK is working class. Does this product actually work for people eventually because if it does you've definitely got something there and i'm not saying that's a case of like people can't afford it they can very much afford it is does it actually land you know you've got some great brands up in west wales you've got like cold town coffee if you haven't heard of them they're the most unbelievable coffee brand creating jobs up in wales as well um they see coffee as being the new black cold which is like coal um there's crust who've smashed Wales as well in terms of the banging brunch spot.

16:34If you can make it there, I truly think you've got a brand that can land all over the country. There's the, is it Beefy Boy Burgers in Pembrokeshire? Oh, yeah. I think I've heard of that. I'm not sure. It was the best burger in the UK. It's that way. It's on the way. I think it's in Pembrokeshire. Is it? Beefy Boy Burgers. Let me just try that. Beefy Boy Burgers. Yeah, it's in Hereford. Hereford, yeah. Oh, so Hereford, East Wales. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember, yeah, because I remember when I was working in Brecon, I remember going into the town centre thinking, well, the only thing they've got is a Morrison's.

17:16I was thinking, mate, where's the wagon woman? Where's Hernandez? I could probably do that. But it's fascinating. I think you're so right. If you can start, there's no right or wrong here. It's very nuanced. it's one if you're going to build a for example a kombucha brand be very happy with it getting into all the stores in london and that realizing that could be the cap i think that's the first thing and realizing that it may not be a household brand in the uk and then go and export point one the other point i think which is fascinating is maybe to why i love doing these podcasts about stretching my kind of thinking is yeah maybe if you do go into a corner shop and in in um the valleys as you've lovely the way you say it's amazing mate um and see if could this brand work there and then you're on something and i think what you said there about that crunch if crunch works in wales it's more likely it could work in london as well i think it's a really fascinating um fascinating fascinating piece what um so talk me through rogue talk to me like where were you when that idea began to bubble in your brain and what what was what was the call to adventure to start a brand so i worked in this ad agency in london i worked in two so i did studied i studied and worked in an advertiser uh so it was the thing i moved to london for when i was 18 watched an episode of madman and thought i want to smoke at lunch and drink it was like I want to drink and smoke and eat like lunch with like clients and then I moved to London for it and then I was about 24 and it was this case of being like I was there with my account director it was 10 p.m at night and I was looking at her and thinking like we're working together I know what salary she's probably on or around I can't buy a house with this salary and this what I'm looking at right now is my promotion and she's like eight years older than me or so that's not a problem but i was like fuck this like i'm gonna try and you know i it was basically so i could go and buy a house in london so i thought fuck it the only way i'm gonna be able to do it is like start my own thing but then would make these like amazing like chutneys and stuff and and what was a hobby to her have really good feedback from people so i said like i said i moved back to wales and i said like well we'll we're gonna start this proper we're gonna make It's a real full-time business.

19:45And, you know, we were really super premium back then, like$6.50 a jar, which is punchy for someone who's never made jams or marmalades in their life. But what I wanted to do was create something that was invited people who weren't into that space in. So six months go by. We've done a few farmer's markets. We have good reviews of events, but just a product just not selling in January. Like I'm at this farmer's market on my 25th birthday. it's pissing down raining i've sold two jars that month and it was at that farmer's market and i was like i've just got to change our tact here massively so we came up with um an espresso martini marmalade wait sorry so so i don't understand how the jams were selling and then suddenly in january weren't selling did the product change or the price the pricing you know it's great at christmas but if you haven't got something that's like sorry yeah yeah so sorry we were really doing we're doing well at like christmas we had a couple of stores stuff like that doing well at events but obviously if you don't have those events and if you don't have those stores like selling frequently just non-consequential so came up with this espresso martini marmalade and making sure that we were just using the best ingredients we could and and that took off like that really was like the thing that set us apart i mean eight months later we had uh we met sainsbury's at speciality and ocardo and they were looking at us as part of their future brands trial bay which is how we launched into sainsbury's the following year and we launched into ocardo like 18 months later we basically tested all these products saw that there was a market for people who were looking for interesting flavors paying a premium for it and being like yeah this is exciting and that's how we got listed in sainsbury's trial bay we had to move out my mom's kitchen found a manufacturer everything like that um and this was all bootstruck from like 500 quid and then yeah it was just like it started to sort of grow and then we had like flavors like dark and stormy marmalade negroni marmalade and it sort of became like this marmalade and jam brand that was just like really exciting flavors but boozy or you You know, some of them were just better quality than what was out there.

22:01Do you think the unique flavors obviously drive like newness and incrementality and light up a kind of crusty category, which is really interesting. Pardon the pun there, crusty bread. But did the rate of sale have legs? Do you know what I mean? Like, was it a one-off purchase or was it kind of a, well, try it once purchase? Or what went wrong with that? Do you know what I mean? So I think what we did, which was flawed, was we had a dark and stormy marmalade, a Negroni marmalade, an espresso martini marmalade. A customer's not going to buy, you know, they rated all the products like 4.5 and above and up to five on the blood orange and vanilla marmalade we did we had too many we had too many products and some of them would be cannibalizing one another um and what that ends up doing as well is you just have if someone's looking for an alcohol-based marmalade you've got three to choose from well you've got to buy three different products you've got to hold all that inventory and everyone wants something different but you've almost got to really be like a bit more disciplined now i think in being like we're not going to launch mpd because someone wants mpd we're going to go really deeper on this one flavor and almost exhaust it and until we find out that we've exhausted this whole customer's journey of buying this consistently then we're not going to make anything new we're just going to really go deeper on this you know at one point we had like this range of like i think we had three oh that was and i remember it was just towards the end of it we had three condiments four marmalades two jams i don't two condiments four marmalades two jams and we were just launching three cereals into like as does emerging brands and they were healthy cereals and i'm looking at this brand and i've got like healthy cereals that was if i'm honest a money play and because i saw what was happening in the us and then i had like bravado chili pepper jam and i'm thinking what the fuck is this brand like the where is the acquisition going to ever come from what are we like where are we putting our money where are we putting our time yes everyone can say they want certain products for food service and one thing for retail but it was just like confusing we went from being like this exciting brunch brand to being like kind of a breakfast brand kind of like going into health when we had like an espresso martini marmalade and we just we were looking at what the volume was going to be and and that was our doubt but one of one of the reasons where we suffered the yeah i wanted there's so much to kind of tease out here because i remember you saying to me mate like as because i think we were catching up a lot in lockdown on over zoom and i remember you saying we're gonna own brunch like almost be like the posh you know the posh brunch on a weekend people have some croissants sit down own that occasion rogue is that occasion and then obviously then i think we spoke like we're gonna own breakfast and you kind of you'd have crossed into that money grab thing and so many brands do that i think pippa nut did that with uh almond milk ed from curators did that curator suddenly went into mushroom burgers even though they're a jerky brand completely you know you see these money grab opportunities and they ed was super candid about that delighted to announce the extension of our partnership with the wonderful Billion Paul from Mackenzie Jones but even more exciting they have just launched a brand new brand as part of Mackenzie Jones called MKJ Ignite MKJ Ignite is a recruitment firm which specialises full shebang focus entirely on challenge brand space they work with some incredible brands Lucky Saint, Good Raise, Purdy & Fig Hunt & Gather and Real Superfoods they can support with your hiring needs across all levels top to bottom junior entry level jobs all the way through and up to md and co level so if you're looking for a field sales stomper a sales wizard an ops guru a supply chain sensei uh you name it mkj ignite can help you out and look if you're looking to wet your whistle ignite your curiosity then check out the poddy we recorded with them back in july laden with wisdom all about like do's and don'ts of hiring and like how to create the perfect job description you will love it guys are you ready there is gonna be some absolutely totally brilliantly bonkers next level madness coming your way today are you ready to take your brand to a whole new stratosphere for free imagine connecting your product to a digital world through a simple smartphone scan you know the drill scan it bish bash boss you're away that ladies and gentlemen is the magic of the new gs1 powered qr codes these next generation barcodes act as a gateway to a world of endless possibilities they connect your product's unique identity to multiple online sources of enriched real-time content why why on planet earth should you be getting your mitts on these gs1 powered qr codes well look very very simple mate gs1 will help you drive revenue upsell and cross-sell your amazing products boost your bottom line boost your bottom line yes please where do i sign enhance customer engagement look delight your customers with dynamic content that captivates and keeps them coming back for more more more please sir can have some more yes you can comply with regulations look you want to be building your brand you don't want to be knee-deep wading through a deep river of legislation agrovation these barcodes allow you to stay ahead of the curve look don't allow this beautiful boat of boundless opportunity to sail away into the malting sunset be on that boat join GS1s UK's free pilot program today yes it's completely free there will be a link in the show notes thank you so much so with the range piece and how how the skews cannibalize each other because that's fascinating because on the other side of that equation it's like you must you get a lot of shelf space with and like a great brand block on shelf and you've got loads of skews in there how how do they cannibalize each other just well speak about that a bit more because you you just because even if a marmalade or something like that goes on sale doesn't mean you're going to increase your consumption of that product like that's just you going on promotion and just being like hey do you want to try it and you may go and try the next one then and so for example you may buy as a customer five marmalades in a year and that's pretty good but if three of them come or three well four when we in our case four of them come from the same brand and you've only bought one at a time then you're just like you're still having to have space for those four products but it doesn't mean you're reaching a new audience it just means that an audience is going wow this brand is really you know they give me this they give me this they give me this they all taste great which one do i want to choose today it just there's too much choice for someone and the brand that i think do it really really well in the uk is bloody drinks they just do a you know a bloody mary and i invested in them on cedars and they just went our rate of sale even in these 200 stores is excellent because we've limited that consumer choice those that are into us are really into us and if you take that data then to a buyer you just open up more distribution you've got one product to focus on and i think it makes it harder for a brand owner because they're like i'm just going to keep beating the same drum and maybe you get bored but fuck me do you do people remember what you're about like everyone just goes oh bloody yeah they're the bloody drinks brand have you met them harry and will they're jokes yeah they're so good they're hilarious i need such brand envy i know i know they're just like they've i think they've just launched a christmas skew which is like you can get you so like bloody damn bloody asher um because obviously will's presenting big brother at the minute but they've they've come to a couple of drinks we've done and they're hilarious um but they'll they get it so right they i think they were gonna buy this bloody bus this big red bloody bus yeah yeah they but the bloody can keep going it's like when they launch into hos where it's like we're in bloody patros and our bloody mums are so bloody excited it's so good um it just it gives me you know when you look at someone and you go you only look at a brand and you go i'm fuming at how good like how you've committed to the bit and how genius like all of your marketing and comms is i think they're just they're unbelievable i think they're one of the most underrated brands they're still a team of two or three well actually basically one and a half because will was been doing big brother i remember i saw um harry at bernie jam i'm gonna message him after this because i've been trying to get them on podcasts for ages but just haven't the stars haven't aligned um but going back into that and it's always a paradox mpd versus focus always a paradox um i've got i've literally got a lucky set in front of me not i've been chilling these this morning but like but it reminds me of um you know i've got a few friends that work there really good mates and they're just like just do one thing well focus focus focus focus focus us.

31:22Giles Brooks came on the podcast. He said, when we sold Bear, we had all this NPD, but the only thing people were interested in was the, the like role things. I mean, I haven't got kids, but wherever those fucking things were, all the NPD was a nice little thing on top. What we wanted was the one category. He said, be, be the hero of your category, be the hero of your category. And I think it's so interesting exploring your learnings from going super broad, going into too many skews where they cannibalize each other, some healthy, some unhealthy, going into cereal. What would you do differently if you were to say, Sally said, you're right, we're back in mum's kitchen, 2016, 2017, whenever it was.

32:06You've got to make this bad boy work. What do you do differently? Well, you know, in terms of the thing with Rogue as well is we'd raised 20, I think we'd raised 30 grand after three years. You know, we'd raised 30 grand and then we went on to win. With that 30 grand, we'd had, you know, we'd got into a card and we'd got into Sainsbury's Trial Bay without any external funding, which I don't recommend to anyone either sometimes because... Why? Well, we took out a bank loan initially and it's like, you know, we took out like yeah sort of a bank loan which it would have been a lot easier to have had mentors or investors who are like focus on this one strategy um it would have been a lot easier to have gone not easier but of going you can't you launch into those places you don't have the money for marketing you've got a real scattergun approach as well like i was in wales trying to get sales from anywhere like whether it was a farm shop in durham we'd launched with the top wholesalers in the UK as well.

33:09And then when we went out the following year to raise, we were looking to raise about£300 ,000. We'd won listings with Asda and the emerging brands, Gettier, Spinneys Dubai, Waitrose. We were in talks with a big retailer as well for 400 stores across two SKUs. What SKUs? It was Negroni Marmalade and the Strawberry and Tonka Bean Jam. something like that. We were just in talks with, I won't say who, but we were in talks with the one you kind of know you can get volume through. And I remember speaking to this investor in Wales and they were like, well, yeah, I want, you've done all that great, but I want 20 % for 100 grand.

33:54And you're like, what? But you've raised, I've won all these customers. That comes with the value. So we got up to a million. what happened to us was greed of like how much equity you as brand may own or may want initially if you have to have a down round in the future or greed of an investor can be to the biggest detriment of a brand um because it's like you can't raise then 300 000 on a million you know on a million valuation because you go i've done all of this no one's really going to touch it going forward you're down to about 55 percent equity so you've got half the money you need so we raised about 147 000 but you've still got to commit to everyone that you'd won listings with so so go into go into this investment thing because you said you've got to grade each street so it's almost bootstrapping it was a disadvantage is what you're saying bootstrapping it for us could have been a disadvantage now right like it was well it was a disadvantage to an extent it teaches you how to do everything but it doesn't teach you how to do everything well because whether there's a customer whether someone breaks a jar on you know that you've sent out through your warehouse you could be spending 20 minutes on that that you should be spending on like sales like with broken barrier tequila which is the new brand launching which is tequila infused tequila so a blood orange vanilla salon tea and orange blossom tequila our focus is now it's just on the 12 boroughs of london 12 inner boroughs of london for the first 18 months that's where we need to make it work before we start going out to everywhere else and i know we've said about like oh you know you need to make sure it works in these markets or whatever but for us it's about getting consumption and sampling activity and making sure that we've actually got a huge like a strong rate of consumption.

35:50I'm not bothered about the whole grocers for like five, six years now. Been there, got burned, no interest to me whatsoever. And it's, can you replicate that sampling activity in different markets? I don't understand why they wouldn't give you the, it was hard for them to give you the money when you'd already done all that work. Do you see what I mean? We just didn't have access to investors. We didn't have access to like investment. there is a lack of investment in Wales in terms of private angel investment. And when you do speak to private angel investors, I think what they value a business at versus what an institutional investor in London would value a business at are so far removed from one another.

36:37That access to investors was one of the hardest things. And it remains sometimes one of the hardest things, but it remains the same for many brands. I think there are so many brands out there that could be doing really, really well if they could just get through an Angel's, sorry, a Friends and Family round. You know, there are so many brands that could prove their worth. There are so many working class brand owners who could go, great, I can go out and do this if I know I've got this sort of like a solid valuation, a solid investment portfolio. you know vcs aren't always looking for like a million pound turnover yet because getting to a million pound is tough like there there needs to be sort of more sustainable around that i think and how much what was the revenue you got it to what size did you got the business to so we turned over about you know we turned over like 250k in those last sort of two-ish years which you know is not amazing but we had only brought on about 25 35, 33 the previous year.

37:39And then we brought on, yeah, just like close to about 140 at the end of the other year. So yeah, we were doing, we could have done a lot better, but, you know, from doing it in a bedroom in South Wales, I'm... That's amazing. ...fix with where we got to. This is what Sam said to me, is it's like people look down on 250 grand, mate, 250 fucking grand selling whales, so not selling whales, selling jam from whales in your parents' Gaff, that's incredible. But again, it's just completely perturbed and warped view that unless you're doing, unless you hit the 5 million, firstly the million pound mark, then the 5 million pound mark, you haven't really got a brand.

38:19And I think what you're saying there, it's like so many working class founders don't have access to investors. How do we bridge that gap? How do people bridge that gap? And also like, it's just, this is really, this is a really dumb question, but surely with like LinkedIn, you can get hold of investors. surely with or is it just that the investors don't even want to engage in that conversation because it's not fiona's son do you know what i mean yeah i mean people say about linkedin and stuff like that of of and maybe it's a well sting or or maybe it's whatever i know a lot of people may feel uncomfortable of going like hey do you want to invest in this brand we've never spoken but here's a note like we've started reaching out to people on linkedin about regarding investment because we've got SEIS.

39:03But I think it's some people may feel more comfortable with that than perhaps others. There's nothing wrong with that. But even if you look at, say, for example, investor platforms like crowdfunding, you've got to come up with 80 % of the money yourself. So if you want to raise 150, if you've got to get to like, what, the 120 mark, like just to sort of 125 mark, just to sort of be like, oh, there may be a chance of success. Well, that again becomes like, you know, you don't even have that access. There is no angels. There are no angel investors within your family. There's no one who's maybe going to lead around and go, oh, brilliant.

39:44Like they're valued at X. There's no sort of like public. It's not easy to get public knowledge of going, well, they were valued at X. So I should be valued at the same. You know, there's, you could be spending a grand on that for a company to just be a bit of a charlatan. Really. I think there's elements of the FMCG sort of space that are fundamentally completely broken. And I think if you look at, for example, we see it all the time. You know, we see it like with the plant-based space, which is great that it's growing, but you've got like, oh, there's just a VC fund that do, you know, plant-based investments.

40:24what if there's a VC fund that sort of support you know working class communities not just underrepresented you know BAME communities or you know women and again I appreciate that we all have our own challenges but what if you looked at of going like there is a huge amount of working class communities working class people in the UK that just do not have access to making these businesses a reality because they'd have to get a bank loan i think that we as vcs and angel investors really need to look at what are they investing in and what is their sort of appetite for risk and how are they supporting these you know brand owners yeah it's that and that's what i wanted to to dig at because i think we're just i want to go deeper into this what it feels like to be a working class founder with this lack of access to capital versus other brands or other categories or other types of people who can get it easily and then that's their business away.

41:30So say you're, well, let's talk about Broken Barrier. I think this is the best example because you're going through it now. Like why is it, talk to me about your process of trying to raise money and why is it significantly harder than someone who has got, you know, went to private school, goes to San Tropez in the summer, you know, has a signet ring, blah, blah, blah, insert the rest. Do you know what I mean? So we joined, we were fortunate in the sense of we were being able to be a part of the Distilled Ventures pre-accelerator, which supports underrepresented founders. But in order to get onto that sort of accelerator, I took out like a 10 grand loan in terms of just to get initial branding, just to show like the likes of Distill and sort of to be available for the, the sort of accelerator sessions and stuff like that prior to even having confirmed money, you know, from the, you know, prior to even having investment, I took a job at a pub, you know, and I took a job in a pub after coming out of Rogue and sort of just to keep my bills paid and everything like that.

42:41I don't have, you know, access to like institutional investors. I don't have access to angel investors. I don't have access to sort of, or I haven't had access to those sort of people who make, you know, write those checks. And that's been tricky. But what it makes you is it just makes you sure you just refine your brand. You refine your brand, you refine your brand, because you know when you do get investment, that you're going to make the fucking best go of it. and you know that you've got this clear strategy, you've got this clear commercial plan, those who come on are invested in what your plan is as a business as well.

43:17It's not just a, here's a money round, we've seen what's, as I've said, growing in the US, it's going to happen over here. Like, we've got such a different, and it being a second brand as well, I've got such a different perspective on, like, what the business needs to do, you know, from building up 2 % for the planet in our P &L, everything like that where we'll spend money on marketing where we won't you know where we won't overspend money on marketing um we want to build a sustainable business that doesn't requires as little funding as possible let's let's go back reverse back and talk about what you do differently at rogue because i think that can like set us up nicely for for broken barrier so you said i think we're talking about like the loads of different having loads of skews if you were to do it differently would you just do like espresso martini bravado jam tonga and um like what would you do differently from the the skew count and then yeah so i would do i would keep my strawberry and tonka bean jam the tutti frutti jam dark and stormy marmalade and the blood orange and vanilla marmalade i'd have four products and i would go as deep as i could on getting those products into every single store I could in a certain area first, whether it's London or whether it's like in Cardiff or whether it's building up that and having a rate of sale, which I knew was going to be, you know, that would work for us.

44:41I would just solely focus on having those four products and being like, oh, they're the Jams and Marmalades brand, not, oh, we're a brunch brand that does this. I would take out the friction. Like you don't want to be sort of stuttering over any of your words when you're trying to sell a product in you don't want to be like oh we make a range of like sodas and cordials and tonics and this and this and this and this and this but you just want to be like we're known for doing this one thing well do you want to have a chat and i would just sample the sample as much as i could i would just get like product on i would just get people to try the product and when you said go deeper what do you mean by that I'd go deeper in terms of being like I wouldn't be chasing um say for example if you're you want to build a rate of sale in stores like and you want to go like okay well I know I need to get to say three to six a week in a certain store until I've been sampling enough that I know that I'm reaching that many people trying and coming back and repeating purchase and everything like that I wouldn't I would just be like that's my focus on the first year like Like, for example, if our plan is with Broken Barrier to sell a case a month in an independent store in South London, until I've sold 72 bottles in that store that year, I haven't done a great job of that product.

46:09So I should be down there sampling. I should be down there like, how do you bring out merch? How are you speaking to them? Are you finding out consumer feedback? Are you finding out feedback even from the retailer? What can we be doing better? What can we be doing that actually supports the retailer or supports the consumer? That's what I'd be focused on. Boeemi, our beloved sponsor, are helping build the fastest growing challenger food and drink brands. Look, if you're a small brand just starting out and need your first indie stockist, your first 100 stockist to wholesale, Boeemi are the platform to categorically speed that up.

46:42But if you're a big brand wanting to get bigger, Boeemi are also insane. and they make field sales marble smooth silky slick they're just epic ollie's ollie's been on this podcast twice actually they saw a 29 uplift in sales when using bowie me to check major malt listings availability insane 29 uplift by downloading an app insane lucky saying my boy aaron duff who's coming on this podcast in a couple of weeks weeks he uses it to manage a team of 30 people and they've lucky to have unlocked 500 draft listings by using bowie me look you've got to get involved with this stuff it's absolutely insane and it will categorically change your life it's just the sickest platform i use it all the time at ireland hi guys super super quick one so so excited look for years i've been badgering on about hungary the podcast you're probably bored to death thanks for putting up with me but hungary is also an agency and we look after one amazing brand called ireland's chocolate we've had a great time over the year we've won listings at a load of wholesalers we've won milk and more we've got our first grocery listing coming very soon which is very very sick but what i'm thrilled to announce is hungary's merging with hc consulting um my boy harry clark and his wonderful team he's an absolute g they do brand strategy new business business and account management but why i really love working with harry and why we've got on so well over the last couple of months is harry was actually the founder of the boozy isolate brand pops he's been in the trenches he's grafted his face off he's had the sleepless nights he's had the turmoil he's had the triumph he knows what it is to be a founder he is a founder and he's got a proven track record in grocery and out of home holy moly dips the gut stuff savile drinks remio gelato so if you're a brand and you're you're stuck you're looking for like new business help you're looking to scale drop us a message we'd love to chat thank you so much back to the old episode it's almost like i you chris d and he was he was the ex-seer of booze director of food at harrods lovely guy and he was talking about early stage brands focusing on distribution density get a boiling hot rate of sale in a super super super narrow demographic almost like postcode so you could just do southwest london like what we're doing with islands we've gone into balian stage we said no to um some of the other ones we're going to just sample like fuck there get that rate of sale so piping hot because then one you've got actual proof proof of concept so it means actually opening the doors to other retailers is way easier because you've got the case study three you can get this osmosis effect which is like they're almost you know how starbucks were the first business to open their next shop opposite each other it creates like a a thing in the consumer's mind if you start seeing your jams pop up in loads of places in wimbledon for example it creates this kind of this momentum so i think what you've said there so laser focus with skew count laser focus with energy um you said we'd know where to spend our money and where where not to spend our money what are those where where would you spend your money if you do it again and where did you piss money away like you know there was this whole thing of like there was a wonderful time of facebook ads you know and everyone sort of talks about this like oh gold oh there's a golden era of facebook ads but they were only golden if you had the money to sort of fund it we were working on you know we started launching i think we did facebook ads as late as 2021 and we just had a product that was like it was a 395 jar that was four pound a ship so you needed to sort of for a customer to be spending 20 quid you're spending x amount on picking and packing and all of that sort of stuff a consumer's not going through four jars of jam that quickly so it was like you know but we were sort of like oh but we need to sort of make sure that we are you know repeat purchasing and stuff like that we didn't have that we should have known our consumer was not going through as much jam as we would have liked you would i think every brand in their head loves to think that oh my god this customer is really loyal to me and every morning they wake up and they'll go and spread strawberry and tonka bean jam or toast but if they bought four it could be like six weeks to eight weeks until they come back i'd go deeper on email marketing of building that consumer base because you can when you build that consumer base you've even got the option to one day maybe even go into crowdfunding you can tell your story as a brand as well you've got this base that you can take to retailers of saying like look i do actually have these advocates who are here um i would focus on um yeah those stores i would focus on a borough like i would want to be the jam of a borough or with the tequila now we want to be that tequila of zone one to two almost in london that flavor tequila and i would just be making sure that as you are doing with islands i focus on sampling so so much that then it becomes like i can open up four or five bars on the same road.

51:46Whereas like, instead of just trying to get like four or five bars sporadically, I mean, if you look at, say for example, Lucky Saint on tap on their website, you can see there's this huge, amazing cluster in Westminster of probably within the space of like 200 square meters that probably accounts for more than their whole sales of on tap in Wales. Like that's where I would go deeper as that CEO shared. the i interviewed james avadeek from goo and he then went on to coconut collaborative and he what he was saying is and what you said you've touched on a gorgeous point mate of i think founders think people are consuming their brand all day every day and the the rate of people are going to consume it so much that the rate of sale is going to be high what what james was saying is people would buy a goo really like when was the last time you brought a goo and you like years ago years ago i think i think and i the numbers may escape me but i think the average consumption of per consumer was like once every six months at best great product great brand he was like okay coconut yogurt well people are going to consume that every day like people will consume your yogurt for every day and that and the frequency of consumption and the occasions of consumption you could have it three or four five times a day is so much greater that i think founders don't necessarily think about that um is the is the first thing and then the second thing about like the borough I always use the analogy of imagine you're trying to water a garden imagine London's a garden I think I did this one of the talks I think you may have been at bread and jam which is yeah yeah which is like if you've got to imagine your resource is a water pot and you've you've got like sunshine on on on that um on that garden if you try and spread yourself across that whole garden like the not many flowers are going to grow but if you super i don't know asha flowers here we go right um it's like this is written in the stars mate but if if if you're if you're laser focused and pour that water on that one thing it's going to grow super super super high and i think what so many founders do and i made this mistake and we almost made this mistake at islands is you try and pour water across everywhere with the hope that everything's going to rise up but it's like now you need to be laser focused you you really like and it's it's very easy to say that now in terms of retrospect and then i know you know where we're trying to raise that seis investment of like and having it being our second brand i think it's it's so difficult you've got to sometimes make it really difficult as a brand owner to not become distracted to not become like oh but there is a bar in like cardiff that we could get back into and i know i could get maybe two bottles a week in there and do all of this if that's not a bigger play for something else like all things like export is really sexy like at one point we sort of were exporting out to the us with rogue it's like they were taking two pallets taking ages to get paid and they were like well this isn't actually as good as we'd originally thought it was going to be because that 40 margin if you're lucky to be making that is now taking three months to make and i've got other customers who are in London or in the UK that are waiting to get paid but you put up a LinkedIn post actually saying like oh we're in the US and people going great.

55:09Oh god it's just like you just like oh I felt like such a. I mean I did it with a podcast for Athletic Brewing I flew over to the US and I wanted to create the illusion that I was like yeah they've asked me to get over. I mean I paid for the fucking flights like end up staying on my mate's couch in couch that sounds American in New York um you know all i came back with was penniless and a hangover but like it made a good story so it's it's i know exactly what you mean there's there's a romanticism i think this goes harks all the way back to like back in music with um with the usa and usa the us um but the other thing is and again you know do you know do you know david hyatt uh from hyatt denim yeah absolutely another g like he's a i love love that guy like his whole piece of resistance um for listeners he's got a jeans brand based in cardigan in west wales and check out the podcasting with him is it's sick but his whole piece of resistance is just do one thing well one thing well one thing one thing one thing well one thing well and i i and i think what you've said there about putting guardrail guardrails up because the founder is traditionally an opportunist opportunist opportunities baked into that mindset is new shiny shiny toy syndrome so it's like having having the guardrails to be put in you said you got burned by grocery what went wrong um because i think there's so much in this i think there's a big difference between i think you're so right if just focus on this region postcode get that hot density going what are your flowers whatever the fuck you want to call it but then when you cross the chasm to retail or grocery it's much different it's like it's going into the wilderness when you went into the wilderness what went wrong i think we we we had an online retailer um who have a that everyone may know or or may not know we we went into this online retailer mentioned we were going in there with an rrp of three pound so they would make 40 um we make whatever can you say can you say how much you were making yeah yeah of course so we would we were like a pound five pound ten before shipping or anything like that so we were trying to make yeah 40 plus and yeah i'm just going and yeah it was it was a carder essentially so we went in there with a pound 80 we'd sort of been like a new brand we sort of shared you know we are a new brand and it's at the discretion of the retailer to charge whatever they want you can't price it because i get that they were charging four pounds so they were making like a 55 percent margin on top of rogue when we were doing promotions and we were like we had data that was like only two percent of consumers will spend more than three pound on jam like if you bring the price down you'll earn more we'll be able to earn more and all we ended up doing was paying for all of these delivery costs of like X amount of cases going into all of the, like one layer of stock going into different distribution hubs every couple of weeks.

58:26That will fucking kill you. And just because you're not well-funded as a brand, that you can't pay their marketing fees, that they go, oh, this is what the cost is. Like sometimes there's a bit of a difference with that. There can be a bit of a disconnect with that. I think you know so were you lost making on promo was that 40 % yeah we yeah we were probably losing out we would when we would go on promo we'd be like yeah we probably lost making in the end but we just didn't have we were just almost having to be there for like we've got a card on our books to say to investors who may or may not come on like that there's there's hope there when we launched into another retailer I'm not going to I'm not going to name the other retailers but when we launched um for SKUs you you can spend as much as you want on PR you can spend as much as you want on promotion if they're making a 49 margin on you again 45 plus and you're at 325 like again like the what can a brand do like this should be not price fixing but there's an agreement of like you're a smaller brand you cannot afford the same marketing that some of these other ones do have we went into 50 stores which is like you could be paying for facebook ads or you could be paying for um paying for pr and you just haven't got the critical mass because no one's going to go to canary wharf to buy a jar of jam despite it being one of your 50 big busy stores there was an emerging brands platform that came up just before covid we built a um we got told what our expected rate of sale would be.

1:00:05It was on all of these bays in like 100 bays across the country. And we've agreed terms, finance is good, all of this sort of stuff. We launched the serials, you know, with them. Six weeks into the program, they just teared a whole trial bay down for every single brand. Now, we'd raised investment to go into this trial bay and brought out three new SKUs, sort of spent maybe 50K of that investment on just this one listing. And they've turned around in six weeks and just gone, nah, sorry, mate. We're just going to, cost of living's about to hit. And we're taking this whole, not Travo, but it's like emerging brands platform down.

1:00:50And there's no sort of, there's nothing you can sort of say to that. You just go, oh, thanks. Thanks for the opportunity. It's just cost the business. And that was one of the biggest, most damaging things that happened to the business. You didn't even let it run as long as you said you were going to let it run. And you've got some cavalier retailers that I think can really, you know, that really need to have a set, like take some time to reflect on their practices. Oh my God, I am so, so, so excited. It feels like Hungary is finally swimming in the big leagues. I can't believe this. It's absolutely mental.

1:01:24but delighted to announce that Big Fish, yes Big Fish, are part of the podcast. Perry's been on the podcast three times. Listeners absolutely love it. Some of my most downloaded and cherished episodes of all time. But Big Fish are behind literally so many brands in your cupboard, in your weekly shop. Charlie Bigham, Year Valley, Tyrells, Clipper T, Goo, Rana. I mean, make the list longer than the River Nile. but they also share risk and invest in brands that they really believe are a force for good brands that they believe are going to be the next big thing like how the snack that gives back but even more exciting news big fish want to speak to the next wave of small challenger food and drink brands that are destined for big things the raconteurs, the movers, shakers, buccaneering visionaries so look if you want to speak to big fish and just have a chat get your brand in front of them then drop me a message My mate Louis from Local Beer, Amazing Beer, was in their office, aka La Fishbowl, last week chatting to Perry, Freddie and the Big Flesh crew.