The Bricklayer Who Built a $50M Empire Selling Honey

0:00Quite frankly I couldn't believe somebody gave me five grand So I was like, let's roll with it. Wow. Today we're speaking with Scott Davies. He started off as a bricklayer in Wales before a life-changing back injury ended his construction career. Where do bees come from then? I just enjoyed keeping bees. There was no more to it than that. So I started by just literally knocking on doors down my street. What was your pitch on the door? Knock, knock, Chris opens. I got honey from a friend of mine. It's pretty shit, isn't it? You have to really want that honey with a crappy pitch like that. I got some honey from my garden.

0:31Over the past 13 years, he's turned that 5 ,000 overdraft into a 50 million pound business. So the first year, 23 ,000. 24. 24 ,000. Take it away from me. The great thing about bees, right, is they fly away. If you do it wrong, they literally up and leave and you just watch 300 pounds fly through the sky and you go, it's like half my stock. His journey proves that with the right mindset, strategic patience and raw determination, you can build something remarkable from nothing. That time I was like, okay, I have to change something. I remember coming back from this show with my auntie, bless her.

1:02She's like, Scott, what are you going to do? Like, what are you going to do? Is this the end? And then that fourth year is when we finally got a list in Holland and Barrett. How did you get into Holland and Barrett? Oh, that's quite a cool story, actually. So what was going through your mind when you realised that you could no longer be a bricklayer, as in your career effectively was over? What was going through my mind was how the hell do I create myself a job because no one is willing to employ a guy that's got three GCSEs and a Brooklyn NVQ level two in an office. So I frantically looked around for ideas to start a business, to create my own job with minimal amounts of money.

1:42And what were you considering at the time? Presumably building your business didn't just click as the thing immediately. No, man, no. It's like ignorance is bliss in a lot of ways, right? So I had three business ideas. terrible business plans if you look back at them. One was dog walking and kenneling on my dad's small sheep farm, selling sports equipment on Amazon and eBay and randomly the bees, right? But for context, I grew up in mid Wales, I still live there, it's very rural and I wanted to work outside. And I was reading about things during my sort of recovery on my back and bees happened to be one of those things I was reading about and kind of got interested in that.

2:23And at the time I thought, honey's like should be so much more exciting than what it is right so i was like look all these things these bees are doing it should be so much more exciting so from that did some half day courses with the welsh government half day on accounting half day on marketing sort of thing half day on how to write a business plan and um this uh sort of ex-banker was giving me a sort of lesson on how to write a business plan whipped one up literally just walked down to the bank and i said any chance to a business account and an overdraft. She goes, you'll never sell that much honey, but here's a five grand overdraft.

2:58And quite frankly, I couldn't believe somebody gave me five grand. So I was like, let's roll with it. Wow. That's insane. What did you do with the five grand? You're gonna believe it. So I designed my entire brand on my website, bought my jars and like, and my four beehives. It's quite interesting, the branding. I didn't even know what the word of brief was. Like literally the context is ridiculous. So went to a local new times of population, about 14 ,000, right? Not huge, but there was a branding agency of sorts there. I went there and said, guys, got this idea. It's called Hilltop. And we want to kind of look like a bit like an innocent smoothie, get some B-facts out there, kind of be playful with it.

3:38They're like, dude, okay, you know, that's going to cost this much. I was like, yeah, that's not going to happen. So they're like, is there any other way you can do this that doesn't cost that much money? they were like we'll give everybody five minutes of lunch to draw something i was like i'll take it and then from that that was it right so i managed to design the whole brand website everything get my stock for five five k five k in five minutes yeah that is a great little uh it's a really interesting uh response from them yeah but that's i think that's the kind of narrative i'll probably say for this whole thing of how i've worked with people that want to make you grow and help you grow and kind of not the instant mentality going, I need more money.

4:20That wasn't the first thought that come into my mind. It was like, well, how do I do this without spending that? How do you know that honey was the right thing? You had three options in front of you. Why did you pick honey? Because I just enjoyed keeping bees. It was literally it. There was no more to it than that. There was no like, what's the size of the market? What kind of size of prize can we get? And all that. No analysis whatsoever. It was just like, I need to create myself a job. That's all I wanted to do, right? I had this sort of pre-convoluted idea that someday I'll find my wife and I'll have some kids and stuff.

4:48So I kind of definitely need to have a job that earns a decent amount of money. But that was pretty much the scope. But as in you were already a beekeeper or what? No, no. Greg Leo, coal yard worker. Dad wasn't into bees. Where did bees come from then? I just started reading about it. Normal people don't go, all bees. All bees. Yeah, all bees. It was amazing. Yeah, I want to know more about that. When you're like literally like spending your 21st birthday lying on the floor because you can barely move because of the pain. People just give me books to read. So started reading about bees and insects and stuff like that.

5:24Wow. Kind of got hooked on that. That's honestly unbelievable. It's like in this scope of what we're going to talk about in the size of the company that you've built. Yeah. To have like come across something that is clearly such a gap. But by like by chance of reading. yeah yeah so talk to us about bees then how does one go from reading a book about bees to building a business about bees so definitely not so definitely we're not a beekeeping enterprise we're a honey seller right that's what we are now but um it's a great lesson in there and cash flow so when i started growing the business bees were my passion that i wanted to make right that absolutely hell bent on getting like 300 beehives is considered a commercial beekeeping enterprise and i was like all right i'm definitely gonna get there but each beehive knocks you back for sort 300 pounds a time and the great thing about bees right is they fly away right it's not like a sheep in a field we pen them in if you do it wrong they literally up and leave and you just watch 300 pounds fly through the sky and you go that's no it's like half my stock so it was a huge learning curve on on keeping bees right and i realized kind of early on i was a pretty crap beekeeper in my defense what's a good beekeeper great beekeeping husbandry in terms of the way you manage them, stop them from swarming, good beehive location, picking the right moments to grow the beehives or amalgamate them and all these different things.

6:49And quite frankly, I just didn't have the time and the patience because I needed to create myself a job that paid quite quickly. And, you know, even my simple education, I knew that I needed to take a certain revenue to earn that wage and the bees were taking so long to generate any sort of income, but it's not like you just put them there and then like a sheep or cow and kill them in nine months time and get your profit from it um you might have a really crap year you might not make any honey you might make quite a bit of honey you don't really know the bees might fly away they die with a disease the return was so slow so um a guy that a beekeeper still supplies us to this day actually said you'll be a beekeeper and sell honey in bulk or you're a guy that buys honey in bulk and sells in jars you can't be both and there was a time where i was like sort of three years into the business and just the context guys like five grand overdraft that's that i did i've never taken any investment first year 24 grand sales right second year 84 grand third year 230k still not make any money like still like no cash in my pocket i still pay myself like two grand a year at one point and it was like that that moment in time he said like look and i realized that actually the bees my my sort of constant demand to grow the beehives was taking all my cash and they weren't yielding me cash back so i said so the emotional attachment to the bees is like okay i've got to stop that now i don't quit very often i don't say no to things i like i see it out but at that time i was like okay um i have to i have to change something and as soon as i flipped to go okay bees no more investment in bees all about the honey and i found this whole new world of um i think the average age of a commercial beekeeper is like 63 64.

8:32so all of sudden I find all this huge group of people around the UK that just didn't really know how to market it didn't really want to market it couldn't be bothered with the shops and all that they just wanted to keep their bees so that's my gap right I found finally that there was a reason for me to exist was actually to buy honey and market this honey for these guys and girls right so um that was a huge turning point in the business of three years in so what you're you're stumbling like uh the luck that you stumbled on, so to speak, was finding a community of people who weren't being served but had a need, but were kind of non-plussed about the need.

9:09Yeah, they had the product, but they didn't have the correct demand for it, right? They're just not happening about it. Because for them the joy was in the beekeeping itself. Yes, yeah, yeah. So then all of a sudden you found this sort of old school mentality around the beekeeping cooperative group that were existing at the time, and it wasn't servicing the needs of all their beekeepers and all their cooperative members. So all of a sudden this young lad comes along with absolutely no money and says, well, you can do things differently. And they're like, well, I don't know if we believe you. And then all you have to do is carve out some belief out of a couple of beekeepers.

9:38And then that showed them the way. And I probably rose the price of English honey across the country by about 25 % for these beekeepers. So they were really happy with that. Did you have much support? because that is a great business decision to be like, okay, I can now see that there is a sort of untapped supply here to meet a commercial demand. Like, did you have business advisors at the time? That was just like gut feel. These take too much time. Yeah, like I kind of think as a sort of entrepreneur, if I say the word is like kind of I'm cautious until I see the gap and then I'm like so bullish.

10:13It's like as soon as you see the opening, you just two feet in, right? As soon as it makes sense, you just go after it. So as soon as I saw that, I was like, wow, this can definitely work. 100 % focus on that. And up in that time, I was still sort of feeling around the dark a little bit until that point. How does this beekeeping space work then? Is it like door-to-door sales? That's how I started, door-to-door sales. And I'm a really introverted person, really introverted leader. My mum used to do my car insurance for me and stuff like that. So the thought of me going to sell honey scared me to death.

10:43But it was a necessity. I had to do it. So I started, I built my courage up by just literally knocking on doors down my, down my street. And you know, coming out in like sweats, just like. With honey jars? Yeah, that's when I first started, right? Oh my God. And then I finally mustered up the courage to go into town and sell to this sort of local veg shop. It took like four jars off me. Did people buy from the door to door sales? Yeah, they did. Yeah. Yeah, they did. Because like, you know. How much was a jar? It was like a fiver, six pounds, something like that. Sort of towards that 13 years ago.

11:12um and like oh i'm just keeping bees at the back of the garden it's local honey like yeah yeah i'll buy that run out of stock within the first month for my sort of my own little beehives i had which wasn't many um so that's what sort of also prompted me to try and go on that quest of finding the source of honey right right from the early doors um and that was quite interesting about honey as well is that it's kind of its own worst enemy in a sense where this whole thing about local honey and actually means that no one can really break out so if like i'm in powis i go to shropshire i'm the enemy right it's producing really good honey from great beekeepers everything like i'm not touching your honey you're not from shropshire okay but it's really good and it was literally seven miles on the road it's like no you're not from shropshire go away so they made it hard that's what it kind of flagged me was how do i make this a national prospect because i'm not gonna make a job by selling honey in powis alone right but how did you do that then so you're so you're taking the supply in from multiple different destinations yeah yeah and then fought really hard against like you think of all the food festivals at one point i was going to sort of 25 to 30 food festivals in a year so most weekends i'd be on the road in my van just going to food festivals and every sort of county i'd go to is going is it local honey no it's from different beekeepers around the country and whatever else like oh right okay so you have a constant fight and we found um But by doing that, it's great customer research, right?

12:34You're talking to customers constantly every weekend, coming home beaten to death, to be honest with you, by the questions. But one of those things that I should probably talk about is we found another USP was the fact that we were raw honey. And that wasn't on my label to start off with. And people kept asking me, are you raw honey? Are you raw honey? And that was that bridge. What was that name comparatively for the layman like me? So basically non-pasteurized honey. So basically straight from the beehive. I didn't know what it meant to be honest with you, Dan. I didn't know what it meant. So I was like, what do you mean raw honey?

13:03And they're like, well, it's just, is it straight from the B-I? I was like, yeah, of course it's straight from the B-I. You mean honey. Yeah, of course it's straight from the B-I. If I haven't touched it, it's probably straight in the jar. Oh, okay. And that bridged the gap between the county mentality to, okay, this could become a national thing because it's actually raw and people get it. So again, it's sort of, it is luck. So again, it's the staying power around long enough to get lucky on it, right? This doesn't sound like that. this sounded like someone who by force of will sold their honey jars yeah yeah yeah and that was like that was the fourth year in right and i'm i'm struggling at this point i started hilltop what 22 23 i'm like getting to mid to late 20s still not paying my name still living mum and dad and bless them you know they're feeding me weren't asking me for any rent i'm not the cheapest to feed and um and and i remember coming back from this show with my auntie bless her uh jill she was like a massive champion of mine we just done the third year coming back from conway pissing that rain typical wales in front in october spent 700 quid being there took 800 quid made absolutely no money i was like she's like score what are you gonna do right what are you gonna do is this the end right and and i suppose how i started my business and what i said to my mom and dad was i never really went to university never really went to college and went to college for a year to be bricklaying let's treat this as me going university right starting this business right and they're like okay great so three years was my university and i said to my auntie like right fourth year is master's degree right if this doesn't happen we kill it i'll kill it and then that fourth year is when we finally got a listing um in holland barrett and it was our they ordered my first what two two and a half years of honey sales in one order and that kind of just just blew the doors off and that's when i decided to realize that we we had something going on so when people see your story and we're talking about it before they'll probably see the 44 million a year headline but so the first year 23 000 yeah yeah and that's selling 24 24 000 take it away from me yeah it's a hard yeah yeah yeah yeah that is pretty much door to door and festival selling yeah literally just not knowing what the hell i was doing right just what was your pitch from the door knock knock chris opens i got honey from phunamia you have to really want that honey with a crappy pitch like that honey from my garden because i'm running my garden you fancy something like yeah okay we'll give it a go um yeah that was it really and so from year one two three you're still doing that year four you break into holland barrett yeah so 234k was out of third year um and then that went to 684 and then that was when we started to go okay i can employ someone i get a little premises and how do you get into holland barrett um oh that's that's quite a cool story actually so um speciality fine food fair in excel in london i think it was excel i can't remember what the other one is anyway it's irrelevant um welsh government help start up go to these shows right and um i think it was my discounted rate was 400 pounds per day which was brutal for me says i could afford one day it was on sunday monday tuesday right and i picked the tuesday my entire stand was on my back got on the train from newtown at 6 40 in the morning gone to london done really done london crushed some people in the tube without the big and full of my whole stand on my back and they just went i'm trying to get this map and where the hell am i going and i finally turned up at there late gutted that was late i was like an hour was gone already on my 400 quid pitched up on what a half meter stand on the welsh government stand and And it's that awkward thing where everybody sort of passes are down by their midriff, right?

16:48So the eye contact's really bad because you're constantly looking at, I'm a desperate guy, right? I want some sales. I don't want to talk to students. But all the students hide their badges and stuff like that. So you're constantly trying to qualify who's coming up to your stand. Three girls went to my stand, all the badges hid, and I thought, for God's sake, all right, we'll just go through it. So I started tasting my honey, and we had like a cinnamon honey and a ginger honey and things like this. And we're like, oh, oh, this never really worked for us in our stores before. I said, oh, what stores are those?

17:16And she said, oh, I'm the product manager of Holland Barrett, I'm the category buyer of Holland Barrett. Whenever I went, oh my God, charm offensive. It's just like, let's talk, let's talk. And they were really interested in it and I basically hung on to that inquiry for dear life. I went through four buyer changes, took 10 months, but I was like, I'm not letting this go. No, not a chance. And so by pure persistence, I managed to get the launch. Yeah, that was it really. And you didn't know what barcode was, an out-of-case barcode. Didn't know how to do any of this, how to scale up production.

17:53I had like 10 of my family and friends in this room, probably the size of this was my factory, labelling by hand. I put my Christmas hat on, listen to Christmas music, just going for it. It's actually just to be, you make a physical product, we make a physical product at the height. One of our biggest breakthroughs ever to this day came from going to the Excel, going to vitamin and supplement, you know, expo of some kind. Yeah. Really early on. The amount of entrepreneurs that ask me for advice, DM me, like all this kind of stuff. And, you know, I've got this idea, I've got this, I've got that, you know.

18:28They just want you to solve their questions. And I was like, I didn't know. I came from tech. I didn't know how to make a physical product. I didn't know how to make supplements. just knew what I'd had and what worked or whatever. And I had to go to so many expos. We still do, but now go with the team. But back in the day, Joel and I would go to the expos. And to this day, we're one of the most impactful people in our business. Full stop. By complete coincidence, by speaking to so many people, we met the head buyer of this enormous conglomerate global company that make our capsules. And the only company that can make those capsules, basically, the inner and outer ones, you know, that was just luck.

19:09And he's from Belgium and he was there, but whatever. If you don't go to these places physically and go to enough of them, so you spread your luck and spread your opportunity, you'll never meet the people that can change your life. You're not going to meet them in Wales. I wasn't going to meet them in London, just sitting at home at my mom's kitchen table. There is a time when you have to get out the building and go to the things where people are. And actually, I feel like expos and conferences and stuff, they kind of get a bad rep for being kind of lame or whatever else, but they are where people are going in your industry.

19:35and they are really important to change the pace of the business. Literally 100%. You buy a ticket, yeah, and you're going to get lucky somewhere. To your point, you chose Tuesday. Lucky, but you still went. Yeah, yeah. And that whole thing just from growing this business now, from the network and the chances of having that conversation with somebody who knows somebody else is just mad. It is mad and it yields so much. And it might not even be in your train of thought, right? You never went there going to think about Holland and Barrett? No, no. Definitely trying to pick up a couple of customers, but not who and your specifics.

20:06But to this day, you still go to places, right? Knowing that a conversation can lead somewhere and many of the time it does. You have to. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah. And I also think like when you're asked that advice, it's never just one thing that makes it work. Like it's not just that you met Holland and Barrett. There's a million different moments in your business that like staying power is... You're completely right. It's actually being the type of person who's going to get out of the building. I know, I guess like knowing that sometimes you need to be in the building, sometimes you need to be out of the building, but it's not necessarily 100 % of one of those things.

20:35And when it's doubled down on opportunities, right? And when it's, yeah, because you've only got so much energy, right? But sometimes you've got to back yourself to certain things. So yeah, no, it was so from Holland and Barrett, went into Tesco and it's kind of the rest is history as they say a little bit. Yeah. And so when someone like Tesco picks you up, is that rollout? Because that for the business must be in itself so challenging for the supply side. Yeah. I'm kind of embarrassed about how I got into Tesco, like sort of just literally berated them a little bit. And, um, I didn't have a pitch to have nothing.

21:11I had two jars of honey, right? An English runny honey and an English set honey and put on the table when the test and I said, you have no British honey on your shelf. How about you take some? They're like, we kind of agree. Right. How about 500 stores? And I went, yes. And I had no idea how to do it. Right. It's a much dumbed down version of BrewDog story, right? Saying yes first and then go and make a matter factory. Pretty much what we did on a smaller scale. So yes, great. Far in the stores. That's my hard stop date. That's when it's going to happen by. And there's no better sort of better thing than the deadline to really make you pick your game up and really start working hard.

21:48So back home immediately, right? We've got an opportunity. We can see it. We know how we're going to execute this. Secondhand machinery, find a premises, find employees, train them all this stuff right i completely bootstrapped it and and yeah we got it out the door and yeah worked with tesco really hard since bloody hell it's amazing going from almost a moment of what like all the signs are telling you to quit yeah really in your third or fourth year yeah yeah yeah um that moment with holland and barrett but what's the gap between there and tesco then it wasn't much less than the it would have been less than a year yeah less than a year amazing isn't it just how quickly in business these things yeah so they do often come around year four five or six yeah but also most people would have given up by them yeah exactly yeah and then but look i had the blessing right of like the fact that i was still living at home with mom and dad god knows i got three kids and a wife now there's no way in hell i could have done that right exactly yeah it's all about timing right but that's when people often say because i started my business at the same age well 21 ish and people are like my god you're so brave it's like well no if i'm honest like it's not a bad age to start i mean you've got totally student university loans often for people if you're going to university you've got no responsibility like now i don't have kids hopefully i will but like even now i think taking a big risk i think way more about it yeah yeah and it's proportionately way less risky now yeah and look risk the downside was so low for me right if i've gone overdraft and time right that was it yeah when everybody else is like on the like in university or on the beer or whatever i was just like i've got to make this work i've got to make this work and this work and the downside was i'd get to 26 and i would have had an attempt to start a business and some people would respect that right and then yeah where i probably would get myself a job in an office finally so so the downside was like there wasn't one you know but like to your point about risk now yeah every calculated risk it's like i think the perceived thing about entrepreneurs is massive risk takers right and it's like not so much we've had the downside massively you never bet the house on anything um and as a nought as a noughts get bigger at the end you definitely definitely calculate them right it does depend on very much on your life circumstance of the chance i'm the same as you guys started when i was younger moved back in with my mum yeah um that's called like a very fortunate safety blanket yeah it's just a safety net rather that is your opportunity to say i'm betting on myself you know we were talking to tom carriage same kind of thing like lucky he's just bet on himself time and time again it's that sort of selfishness of i don't have kids i don't have a partner to worry about i'm i'm all in on this yeah yeah yeah and you know as the decades roll on that's just not the opportunity that you have yeah everybody's dealt different deck of cards aren't they right and you pay the cards that you dealt at that given time you know it's not your fault you're in a situation you're born into that situation and you make the most of it right you can't begrudge anybody that in a world of obviously you know you're you're a listener of this show as well so So, as you know, a lot of the guests raise a lot of money and do big things.

24:44You've done a very different path, right? You've got a business approaching 50 million quid and it's 100 % owned by you. You haven't raised any money. Why? It's a great question. I don't know why. Why? I think, did you not know about fundraising? I would say that's probably quite normal as well. No, yeah, no, 100%, right? You think I'm tucked away from mid-Wales and not around money, don't didn't understand how that whole world worked um i was probably a pretty crap storyteller to be fair to try and persuade people to give me any money anyway um and but more of the point really is like i love the idea of i look quite far ahead and go if i can have a company turn over hundreds of millions of pounds with with the free cash flow that i'm in control completely control of and those things attached how well can i deploy that right instead of having somebody constantly knocking at me going why are you gonna do that why are you gonna do that how i need to give this money back to shareholders so i love that ability the thought that the thought of being controlled of a massive business generating free cash flow to do whatever we want however we want like that that to me is super empowering yeah and um so just absolutely unwavering focus on that and it's coming to fruition right it's coming to fruition and now we're making nice money and And you can put it wherever you want, however you want, right?

26:03And work super fast. And all of a sudden I got the same mindset I did 10 years ago, but with loads more money behind me. So we can work even faster. It's so, I mean, my first business was a bootstrap business. And I just feel like when you do that for such a long time, your way of thinking is, I don't necessarily need funding. And I have done a VC-backed company since. And like that was completely different. like we we actually would waste loads of money on stuff yeah well okay back to my point before right is it when somebody says how much it costs you go okay then yeah not going oh can we make that cheaper how would you do that differently right yeah it's the instant for you got money you may as well spend it yeah exactly but if you haven't it makes you think differently and i think going back to the whole point of why i bootstrapped it i think where i'd sort of flip it on his head and say why did somebody need money right because i always sort of push back on that going why why do you need to raise right because i just worked with all my suppliers i was like right i win you win right how do we set this up in the terms how do you help me sell more of your honey and then but the conversations are really insightful and then you can be really creative and so when we started the business i'm just like why do i need money to buy stock what if i work my guys are going to sell me the stock and get terms on that then i don't need the money that's my constant four posts was that and we've got that all over the world now where people want us to do well and they give us the terms to do well um you've mentioned a few times being uh like quite shy and quite introverted like how does that square now with running 140 people ah yeah i think it's leadership's quite interesting right the scales of leadership you've got to go through on those different levels of the business and i've kind of become quite good at adapting myself to be what's needed at that moment in time.

27:52I think that's probably one of my little superpowers is that I'm still deep down that person, but I'm having to be somebody different and I'm all right with that. And I'm quite conscious about it. And I think introverted leaders make really good leaders because they're quite conscious about what's going on around them. And, um, and yeah, I kind of learned to be somebody different on every stage of growth. You know, we're up to 40, 50 million pounds now, and you've got really talented people in the room and know what they're doing industry experts and so you have to be a completely different leader than you were at probably the hardest time i found i don't write you down but like when i was sort of 10 to 15 million pounds a really hard thing because you're considered a bigger company you consider you've got a bit of money but you can't quite do all the things you want to do well and the stock and the stock stuff is the biggest problem yeah because your cash flow is cash was smashed yeah yeah so um yeah so i just have to be a different leader every every sort of step of the way really um and so how did you from that position of start with the five grand overdraft bootstrap your way to getting into holland about like how did you compete against much bigger companies i think it was it was our total usp that got us in the holland barrett realistically um with the whole raw honey thing um and i think we played the card of going they needed somebody else they needed somebody else in the room and um they so they needed us the industry needed us right so it wasn't it wasn't really on how you're going to compete with these guys it's like thank god you're here oh right right and because because and they didn't they weren't saying that right they're buyers you know you've got you've got to interpret everything you can right but they're definitely going this is this is a one trick pony like sort of um category at the moment there's one dominant player that owns the entire brand shelf and they do all of our private label so i'm i'm kind of i'm the knight in shayan arms and take the gun from your head on your negotiation rooms because now there's somebody else right and that's that's been us that's who we are we've developed because we were allowed to be developed and they needed us so you're like the challenger brand yeah yeah yeah yeah i mean that was the market needed us so i didn't have to compete really do we talk about who the conglomerate massive brand is you don't have to name them but you want to just go to any supermarket and you'll see who the other guys are So it's not a...

30:05And it really is one company, is it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Who are now owned by a bigger company, who own a bigger company, who own lots of other food products. Yeah, that's kind of what I was going to ask. Like, who is the ultimate, you have to say the brand of honey, but who is the ultimate company company that owns it? Bain Capital, who own Value Foods. Right, okay. Pretty, pretty, pretty sizable competition. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. But I mean, I suppose for you, like you say, that is a like huge blue ocean to go into if it is one competitor yeah because all the all the retailers were one option yeah it was like some small fragmented brands in the industry right but that we were the ones that were going with the minds are going no we want to be national right we weren't like apologetically kind of small we're just like no we want to be big and we want to be in the room with you guys and all these conversations so they were like yeah come on in so you're really talking about the nuts and bolts of uh how to execute a challenger brand strategy without any money without any money yeah exactly what are you how did you market it yeah what are the tips around this like how can how did you do it so the power this is again this is kind of contrary to what's going on in the world at the moment was we had our own factory right how many start food brands do you know that have their own factory making their own products there isn't there isn't an awful lot of them right so for us it was going okay we don't have the marketing budget no one knows who the hell we are but we're definitely getting traction in retail so the biggest thing job we can do is be the right price for consumers coming into the market if we're higher price but nobody knows us it's a stretch right but the fact that we have our own factory so our costs are low and we don't need to make this amount of money to actually constantly grow the business so we actually don't need to try and be charging more than our competitor so it's kind of a weird scenario because we've actually we you could be classed as devaluing the category by coming in underneath the market leader but we'd flipped on his head and said we'll actually we'll just help the trade up from own label to us so then might lead the competitor right because we just want honey to grow right we want the category to grow and so therefore we want more people to spend money on honey and and learn more about it so we were like right okay we'll just come in the middle we'll tell everybody a bit more about honey with that's our passion um but yeah we're cheaper and then people expect you to be more expensive but it's like yeah but all of our marketing is on pack and just being on shelf that's that's us to do all of it on that um so that's how we kind of what would normally be a food challenge to start brand is you're way more expensive you go on a telling everybody about it and whatever else like that which we did we knew as a commodity product People are buying honey every day.

32:52So we were just like, okay, we can afford to be there. And then from that, get millions of shoppers who are now very much interested in buying Hilltop. And then talk to them about getting us above the market, right? So that's how we did it. And in terms of like, were you doing any, you know, like, were you doing any big marketing? Were you doing any TV? Were you doing any like billboards? done any brand marketing any influence this year we finally did some right i have home campaign around the billboards around london and the whole the whole shebang was it good yeah yeah it looked good it looked good it looked good yeah um we sponsored itv this morning we've got some of that going on at the moment um so that was that's 13 years in for us to do that until that point we didn't you know the usual bit of instagram facebook and all that sort of stuff but mostly on shelf and so we when researching we saw that you've had like problems of actual product recall and how it's like nearly yeah that was brutal man can you tell us about that so so what is a product recall for those that don't know um basically if your food is considered unsafe and they have to take it remove it from the shelves wow that's pretty devastating um we're making a creamed honey product which is like um a softly whipped honey um and it's in a stainless steel tank and by its nature it's quite thick so it doesn't go for any more filters and this the um the auger inside this tank just started just just clipped the side of the tank and put like a tiny tiny shard of stainless steel in the honey and um so small that the metal detector didn't pick it up right so it's that small and look at the bottom of these jars doing doing a tasting in the morning and was like the fuck is this at the bottom of this jar and then all of a sudden we couldn't then on good conscious say when that thing started because it wasn't getting picked up yeah so then yeah that's when you start making the calls going guys we got this product out there we don't know how long it's been out there we don't know what's in it and um i mean man the retailers can just go to town on you with fines and the cost for them of getting it out of store and training standards environmental health and everything else like that and that was pretty much like the day i was like yes this is done this is stupid stupid products gonna kill me off yeah when it was such a small part of our sales as well what was the impact what was the impact um it was at the time it was it was quite devastating in terms of all that stock was thrown out but we managed to work with retail in terms of our size and our scope and said look it's kind of unreasonable them all to come and kill us off for this but you get kind of a bad black mark against your name for that for the next three years it's been like a prison sentence really um and you get super checked by environmental health and things like that for quite a long time but so it was just a great learning curve at the same time but that moment in time you're just like this this could be the end they could go to town and that's and that'll be the end of it what about revenue that year did it dip no no how's that work because it's like there's food recalls are going on literally every day that you wouldn't even know about right it's just one of those things that happen um so it was it was kind of you see when you think your whole world evolves around you right and sort of see the press and it goes out in the food standards agency and you see your honey on then you think oh my god the whole world's looking at this list and it's like actually well i don't think i've looked at that list ever again since right so um so the sales it's not it's not i'm checking regularly no no exactly right so um so yeah we survived it and and pushed on really how When you think about the business now, so 44 million a year selling honey, how big can the business get?

36:35What's the scope and scale of... Honey market in the UK, if you tell all the sort of... There's a lot of food manufacturing, there's a lot of ingredients selling in honey. It's probably worth around 200, 225 million probably UK. Fuck me, you've got massive, massive... That's just the UK, right? But you are just UK at the moment, right? Yeah, yeah. So coming up to 50 million, you're like 20, 25 % of the market. Yeah. yeah yeah yeah yeah no it's good that's so great yeah are you eyeing literally a honey don are you thinking about international yeah yeah so we do we do we've got a shipment on the way to australia at the moment we've got uae and saudi hong kong and uh sweden randomly for our hot honey and um we're just going to start trying in the usa this summer wow what's amazing it's amazing He owns 100 % of the business, getting 44 million a year, just in the UK, with the whole international expansion coming.

37:32What is hot honey, though? It's like a spicy honey. Oh, right, okay. Yeah, so it's good on pizzas and chicken and stuff. Fascinating. So that's the thing, because actually, just thinking on your point, all this international exposure, but there's also variations from the usual honey as well, right? So creating new customers. Yeah. It just feels like you've got so much potential. Yeah, and honey is an ingredient, right? It's massive. it's so much it's a natural sugar and there's still a lot of press around sugar and um i think there's a lot more education to be done on honey as well um the whole like ultra processed food things coming around in the corner i think honey's gonna be a beneficiary of that as well 100 um so yeah in my house we we literally like no sugar at all ever other than honey yeah that's awesome we just replaced it brilliant i think it's quite common but as in but it's such a it just seems For your listeners, you're eating Hilltop honey right then.

38:26Well, sorry. We got rid of sugar and we replaced it with Hilltop honey. Come on. It's more that Hilltop is the brand that we choose versus like it had to be that one. You know, you just got in our household nice and early. That's cool. That's good to know. But it's true. I mean, it's such an interesting ingredient for that, isn't it? I'm just sitting here thinking to myself, how do you think about it now? Because that's big business that you own. It's got massive potential. like a lot of the entrepreneurs I know I suppose not to descend into my story is like got to a certain point knew that it could go a lot further and sold it on the premise that it could go a lot further is that something that you've ever thought about?

39:04what Chris wants to know is do you want to quit and play paddle with us?

39:10deep down deep down deep down deep down deep down deep down deep down I think like it's one of those sort of vanity things and they're going oh I could sell it for this much and you're like well then what right then what to me if it's worth that that means i have to go and spend that much money buying something similar so i'm like what if i just carry on growing it and then grow another business and another business i've been told i'm quite german about it apparently it's kind of a thing that germans do is they keep hold of business and becomes a family business and to me deep down in my core that was why i started it for was for to become a family business um i got three kids with one on the way i love the fact that they see me go out the door go to work they all got hilltop merch everywhere they talk about honey they love it and they get to come to the site and they see the factory and they see all that hard yards trod and they see you're still working hard and yeah of course i could sell hilltop and retire and play paddleboard and be there every minute of the day but i think it's going to send a bad message to my kids and i want them to show that i got to graft and i think once it gets to a certain level you've got all these great people around you so all it really needs is strategic direction right it's not it's not a full-time gig anymore because you you're not the same guy that you were when you was 20 million quid and you can make all the pull all the levers right you just can't you're physically impossible so actually it gets to a point where you i've been trying to make myself redundant the entire time i've been running hilltop right that's my whole aim was like how can i make myself redundant as fast as possible the it's kind of one of those things that carry on the stick on the running machine is it doesn't really happen but i have kind of executed that to a certain degree now where on a monday we'll have a strategic call what's on everybody's minds kind of box all that off we've got the we've got the business plan but we were not we operate in a one-page business plan which is basically all the fundamentals of the business that work sell honey report yeah we sell honey imagine yeah make money tick right we're all good this chat's going up yeah um and then and And then simple, look after the bees.

41:12But the leadership is you've got to let people do this stuff, right? You can't just be like looking at their shoulder going, have you done it? Have you done it? It's like give them the ability to go and do that. So now, yeah, it's all about trying to see how many more businesses I can own and run at the same time. But with the brand Hilltop, the other option is you could obviously do Hilltop Jam and Hilltop Peanut Butter and Hilltop all the different things. Yeah. So I'm surprised that that isn't something. Yeah, it's definitely a point that's been discussed, right, and how elastic is our brand across sweet spreads.