#80 - Aidan Conry - Fearne & Rosie [Head of Sales]

0:00Aidan Conry:Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back to Young Founders. Today, I'm joined by the brilliant Aidan Conry, who is head of sales at Fern and Rosie. Now, Fern and Rosie make absolutely delicious jams that are double the fruit and half the sugar. The story behind the brand is fantastic. Rachel, the founder, is one of the most bubbly, genuine people I've ever met. And I really love digging into Aidan's background from being a buyer to working in all sorts of other brands in the plant-based space. He's got great wealth of experience and knowledge. I really love his passion for the brand and what he does.

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1:16Aidan Conry:Hello and welcome back to Young Founders. Today I'm joined by the brilliant Aidan Conry. So Aidan, can you let everyone know where you work and what your role is there? Yep. Hi, everyone. I'm a head of sales at Fern and Rosie. So for those who have never heard of Fern and Rosie, don't know what it is, give us the brand spiel. Like, what are you guys? What do you do? Who are the founders? All that good stuff. Yeah, so we are a little jam brand based here in the UK. We're based up in Leeds. And the brand story is that we were founded by Rachel Kettlewell, who is a ex-school teacher. And she was very kind of passionate about the products that she was giving to her kids.

1:47She's got three young kids, Fern, Rosie and George. And I think as a teacher and as somebody who was quite engaged and quite educated with what she was giving to her kids and what goes into her food, She looked at jam, which is a product that everybody in the UK loves. Every kid has it at every household has jam in the cupboard. And she was horrified by what actually goes into the product. I think everybody has this view that jam is just fruit, and you just kind of mash up fruit and put it in a jar, and that's that. Actually, it's far from the case. I think most of the jams on the shelf at the moment are more so sugar than they are fruit, which is pretty horrendous.

2:18So she kind of had this view of thinking, well, if everybody's having it, if it's kind of going in every kid's lunchbox, if it's going in her own kid's diets on a regular basis, is there not a better way of doing it? And is there not a kind of healthier, more sustainable way of doing it in that way? She started Fern and Rosie a few years ago. She was doing it while she was still teaching, which is pretty incredible for a good few years. It's only about 18 months ago, actually, that she went full time. And then, yeah, since then, it's been a pretty wild kind of 18 months or so. And we're now in every single retailer in the UK, buying a few.

2:46We're in Tesco, Co-op, Cardo. I still have national coverage there. As I say, kind of like the whole benefit, if you like, of Fern and Rosie is that we have to do all the fruit. most of the jams are around 30 to 35 percent fruit and the rest is sugar and we are 70 percent fruit and as a result that we're also then half the sugar which is nice so the way we put it essentially is

3:05Aidan Conry:double the fruit half the sugar what's not to love nice yeah it's very catchy i actually had the pleasure of interviewing rachel as part of a panel at bread and jam and she's just so authentic so bubbly and was very much like look i didn't know what i was doing when i started the brand i just asked for help and just had this idea and i was like how could it be and obviously built a phenomenal brand that I saw in Tesco just this weekend the Bywomen Bill and Fern and Rosie shippers so like the nice POS displays the brand just seems to be absolutely flying for you how did you first hear of the brand and go oh I could see myself working there yeah I was actually working at a different startup kind of in the FMCG space and I was very very happy in my role absolutely loved it I've done a few different roles as a national account manager into senior national and there's a similar side business to who kind of looking to get their first kind of retail listings and build upon it and a recruiter who I've ever in the past reached out to me and said that there's this role going at business based in Leeds and they think it'd be a very very good fit for me and I kind of battered them away to be honest at first I said I'm very very happy you know not really looking to move far from it and but they came back to me and said like no you need to see this job profile you need to see kind of what they're about and what they stand for above and beyond just the position and you know kind of the role is eventually I said yes and they sent the profile on to me and it was it was just really really interesting from day one I think we've all seen 100 different job listings and profiles, haven't we?

4:23And we've seen 100 different things full of synergies and words, and it's going to be dynamic in this and that. But the very first thing listed on the job profile for Fern and Rosie was the ideal candidate has to be kind. And I think it sounds a bit cheesy, honestly, but it really, really stuck with me. I think I've never, ever seen a job where kind was the first word listed. I think it's always competencies or capabilities. And it just went from there. I think I kind of read through the rest of it. I read, obviously, what we were about from a product point of view and thought that's that's amazing you know when have you ever heard of a new jam or when have you ever heard of a startup in the jam space i think that's super exciting in and of itself but um i think yeah just the above and beyond bits and pieces as i said like working for rachel who who has the story of being a teacher and having that really authentic journey across where she's still learning as well the same pace as everyone else that's amazing to work alongside but also we do so much with with charities you know we're children in need national partner we work with fair share Yorkshire who were based about a half mile down the road from St Leeds which again is fantastic you know I think we all say it it's nice having those bits and pieces of all from beyond you know we can get involved and feel like you're making a positive difference I think kind of working for a business where it's so central to everything we do it just really kind of yeah gripped me I saw it and thought yeah do you know what that's interesting I want to find out more

5:34Aidan Conry:love that yeah I think there's there's so much to be said for all the other parts of the business like not just the the product sense and going okay yes we make a better for you jam and it still tastes great it's as you said it's all these other things of like the children need the charity partnerships like doing all of these things and I absolutely love that like kind on the the job spec I think that's just such a like I mean for anyone who knows Rachel or has seen any footage or content with Rachel like that's comes across she's so like warm and bubbly and like genuine like and was very honest as I said from from this panel it was like put my hands up and say I need help and even like Giles Brooke coming in and being like yeah basically I said to him like help can we make a business can you help so yeah i think the the fact that the business is like obviously thriving you're in so many places how big is the the team now and are you in an office what do you guys do from like a working setup now yes we're still a very very small team to be honest um there's only there's racial the founder and there's me mean sales obviously as head of sales we then have lucy who's our junior brand manager who works across sales and marketing and then we've got mary who's our senior brand manager and that's it for full-time staff we work with a kind of finance agency obviously you know who helps us with the important stuff not running out of money but apart from that honestly we are we're still a very very small business what we're doing we've got an office up in up in leeds which is nice i think rachel is from north yorkshire all of us in the team they live in leeds or from leeds which is lovely um yeah obviously there's benefits to being up here kind of with our zara morrison's down the road so many brands are and in london and have that you know tesco and sainsbury's focus um but yeah we're down there a lot we are down at tesco most weeks but it's nice to have kind of like a northern basis and northern brand and yeah it's a lovely office wherever anybody is in leeds we would love to host you love that i would definitely uh i'm overdue a visit up leeds way um we've got a great customer who um farmhouse i don't know if you know it it's a great lunch spot and they do our smoothies nicole who runs that is absolutely amazing and when i first joined i was like let's go let's go let's have brunch um so yeah if i come up i would definitely stop by the office for you like now you're in this role you've been there what nearly a year is it and not even eight months actually yeah which has flown by but yeah so early days into the role for you what were some of the things that from joining were the parts you're like oh yeah this this has surprised me or this has impressed me or is there anything from joining you're like oh i love this like this is great yeah i think as i alluded to before but we we work with tesco kind of very very closely we were very fortunate to be an accelerated brand with tesco last year so we just kind of finished our first 12 months with that with that program i kind of graduated from it i think obviously there's so many brands have killed to be part of tesco and to work with tesco there's so many more they've killed to be an accelerated brand and kind of have the coverage that we have i think as a result of that there's i think there's a tendency for it to be quite serious and for it to feel quite serious and obviously you go to the days and you know it's quite full-on and there's people there who've never worked with a retailer but from day one i think it was just crystal clear that we love tesco and they love us i think they do us as fun i think we go to every single sampling of them we can we are down there literally most weeks kind of giving out jam we're giving out jam filled chocolates is what we did last week um and i think it's nice to again we all want to have fun at work everybody wants to work for a fun brand i think that's kind of lost on the retailers at times and people think the retailers are a little bit more serious and a little bit more traditional in how they do things it was it was amazing to come into a business as i said where right from day one we have fun with tesco tesco has fun with us that does translate into us working with them i think we do a great job of kind of being in front of them and getting in front of them as often as we can yeah it's nice to think that actually genuinely whenever we turn up we always say that we kind of want to be our you know our buyer's favorite brand every brand says that but actually more than that we just want them to be a brand that if they see that they're meeting with us at 2 p.m they think oh do you know what that'll be a good meeting it won't be a stuffy one it won't be a boring one actually they can have a bit of fun kind of be themselves yeah i I think that's so important.

9:21Aidan Conry:And again, that's my vibe and energy. It's like, how do you make it so that when a buyer sees your name, it's not like, oh, them again. It's like they want to talk to you and you want to be memorable and it's for the right reasons. So, yeah, I absolutely love that. Now, I'd love to turn the clock back to when you were younger, growing up. What was your aspirations and what did you think you were going to do when you were a young lad? Well, like most of the young lads, like a lot of young lads, I was always football mad. I was never very good at football, I'll be honest. So I think being a footballer, that died down at a very, very young age.

9:51I was also always quite interested in kind of like finance and the money behind things. And I think from a relatively young age, the idea of kind of working within sports finance or working kind of professional sports from a numbers side of things was also quite interesting. I then went to uni and did a degree in sports business to kind of like set me up for that and to kind of understand what was going on. But yes, it's a challenging industry sport. I think it's fair to say it's still something that I definitely love and definitely I'm still interested in. but I think it was kind of at university while studying business and studying kind of finance as I say and I was also working in retail I've always had a job in retail every part-time job I've had has been kind of either working in store or doing something to support it and I think that's when I kind of first thought do you know what actually this would be an interesting one too and I think again when you're in store at 16, 17 you don't really think about the head office side of things you don't really think about how does it actually work and who picks what goes on shelf but um yeah getting towards the end of uni I was kind of doing the classic thing of looking at grad schemes and looking what was out there as they were a big big employer in leeds i saw they had a graduate scheme and i thought it was a good mix i thought i kind of combined the the experience i had in store and i've always loved working in store and yeah also kind of like the business side of my degree and thought do you know what why not

10:59Aidan Conry:love that um yeah i think when you when you're saying like yeah you don't think about like when you're 16 17 like in a supermarket for example working like stacking the shelves you only think like who owns this brand or who put the product here or how did it get here and who who says yes to this or what's this space and it's like as you get older the number of jobs you realize didn't exist when you were younger is mind-boggling like I think it's like you can be a doctor a lawyer you can be an engineer like all these kind of like very traditional things whereas now it's like I'm going to be an influencer I'm going to be this like yeah buying the retail the FMCG world I think it's such a fascinating space and that's obviously why I love doing what I do with the ASDA graduate program what were some of the things like when you first kind of came in from university that it was very much like okay here's how we're going to train you and here's how we're going to teach because a lot of the time when I'm speaking to people who have been at say Unilever or Pepsi it's always like the sales training or the the way they kind of move you around departments or anything like that for you that sticks out at Asda that they did really well.

11:56Yeah the movement that you just touched on then I think is is key so when I when I joined Asda as I said I'd been in in store for the best part of let's say five or six years I'd worked for next I'd worked at Waitrose for a year I'd worked at Spa in store but I'd never worked at Asda is the best way of putting it I joined as part of a cohort I think of 50 graduates it's kind of like quite a big cohort for them but the vast majority had never worked in retail they'd never kind of worked in store and they'd never seen how it actually works so the first thing you do when you come in is they put you in store for six months you work on every single department you do every single job you do a single role you work horrible hours I'm gonna be honest it was six months of doing 75 hour weeks kind of every single week you'd have a day off if you were lucky and it was tough but I think you kind of get to the end of it and then when you come across to head office and when you go into marketing or buying or finance or whatever it is you do just have an understanding that I think most people don't head office we just said it then you know when you're in store you don't really think about head office I think the opposite is true as well I think there's a lot of people in head office who you kind of get caught up in a theory of it and you get caught up in designing the perfect fixture or where a ship is going to go or what a display is going to look like.

13:06Most of the time, a store is going to do what a store is going to do, unfortunately. Most of the time, they're right, I dare say, as well. So yeah, I think one of the things that Asda did an amazing job of is that they put you in store right from day one. They kind of force you to jump in at the deep end and to really experience it. But then even after going to head office too, my first role was in retail analytics, kind of working with stores to make sure that they had the right floor plan and the right space. I then went into marketing, which I was there for almost two years and then eventually kind of find my way into buying at the end of my time kind of on the stadium and yeah I'd say buying is kind of where I found my home

13:37Aidan Conry:yeah like I'd love to kind of go through that because from a buying perspective you're in kind of like the chilled milk and then you end up working in the kind of the plant-based milk space so I think that's fascinating but in between Asda you went back into the sport world so yeah what what was that decision where you went like I've done my I've done my retail I've done my like buying part is it I'm gonna have a change or was it just sport was calling you still? I honestly don't know. I wish I had a good answer for it. I think, as you said, I still kind of had that itch, if you like, you know, if I wanted to do something kind of sporty and wanted to have something kind of creative outside of work, you know, that wasn't just entirely work focused and kind of felt like it was more for me as opposed to working for, you know, at the time I was working for a brand or whatever it was.

14:19I'd done a little bit of journalism whilst I was at university I'd written for a site that's kind of one of the biggest sporting websites in the UK and yeah I was fortunate enough that they kind of kept me on it kind of as a freelance writer for a time and then eventually kind of moved into a kind of a paid freelance position with them which was great um but as I say I think I always just had that kind of itch if you know what to get in from work and just do something that felt like it was for me you'll do something completely different writing is something that I've always loved I think it forces you just to view things in a different way I think when you're in buying and when you're in account management you just do a lot of stuff because you have to because it needs doing and there's a lot of fires going on at any one time and it's it's dealing with that but yeah I've always I've always just tried to yeah kind of keep that going as a little side thing of it's creative it's different it's completely you know different from what I do on a day-to-day basis yeah I love it I absolutely love it it's only fairly recently that I've stopped writing part-time actually about two years ago I was doing yeah a nine to five and doing two or three writing shifts kind of five until ten on an evening and it's tough i'm not gonna lie this week so i just thought you know what i want an evening off i want a weekend off but um yeah it's great i really do recommend it though honestly i think if someone does have a have a passion that's in no way related to their work at all it doesn't mean you can't still do it it is tough at times it's tough when you like i said you just want an evening off you want to put your feet up but i think it's nice to have something that is just for you and it's completely not related to what you're doing a day-to-day but it still challenges you still pushes you so it's good fun i would say

15:44Aidan Conry:the podcast is that but this is very much related to my day-to-day and tied in with it all encompassing um yeah it's it's a good mix um and it is very much like this evening i'll be sitting down and editing and i love that moment of like right i'm just like in this moment this is this is for me and i'm enjoying it but the fact i can then share it with everyone listening so that's a that's my gift to you and then from uh from the sports side then into mighty so i remember when mighty first came on the scene it was actually when i had mitch's kitchen so that was my plant-based ready meal brand and mighty spoke to the guys a fair bit online and they're like oh let's just send you a load of our like milkshakes and we can put them in each order as like a gift with a coupon and i was like amazing love this i had this stack just in the kitchen for a long time of like the chocolate and all of this but for you like what was it about mighty that called you in and went oh i like this brand or this opportunity yeah i was so as i said when i was working at azda i was in i was in buying i think as you said i kind of worked across dairy and then i'd moved into kind of free from and buying plant-based milk it's an interesting area kind of free from and plant-based i think it's there's a few kind of bigger brands and a few you know the bigger conglomerates that you're always going to find for the most part actually back then it was quite small and it's quite fragmented and there was a lot of startups there's a lot of kind of newer more energetic brands if you like kind of coming into that space i'd seen mighty i was kind of aware of mighty obviously through that job i'd then come across the the two founders nick and tom um obviously who i eventually then moved across to work for um and i think it was kind of the passion and the energy and i think in buying i absolutely loved it i would move back into buying in a heartbeat but you're quite set in what you do and it's quite almost like rhythmic and it's quite cyclical and that you have you know a 12-month cycle that then does repeat and you get new brands you get people coming in you might buy a new area all that's amazing but i think i kind of looked at the startup space and thought it just seemed like chaos but in a good way i think i was always very impatient i liked getting involved in supply i liked getting involved in marketing when i was a buyer used to wind people up with that i think they wanted me just to stay in my lane but i think i just looked at it and just thought it seems fun um and as you say my two at that time i think were very disruptive very loud for a small brand who were around again i think i looked at that i just thought that's that's maybe a little bit me and i think i'd love to try that so it was perfect timing too because i think they were kind of going from the stage of having one or two retail listings to suddenly being in pretty much every retailer um so yeah i think it was just a perfect time and if me wanted to try something different wanting to get stuck in and then wanting somebody with a with a buying background nice and i think from a from your perspective doing the like being on the store front actually stocking shelves looking at it from a store perspective then being the one buying it and putting stuff on the shelf to there being the brand to going on the shelf like for you it must be great from when you're looking at commercials or negotiations or working with retailers like do you feel like that's really helped your career into doing what you do now like understand how retailers work because you've lived it i hope so yeah i don't know i think i think the biggest learning for me honestly is that you can have the best plan in the world especially when you're at like head office as buyer or a merchandiser you can design the best fixture that you've ever seen and there can be hundreds of hours going into it but when it gets to store they're going to do what they want to an extent and i think as a brand you've got to be aware of that too i think you can have perfect packaging you can have perfect slp you can have you know this amazing thing that you've put again thousands of pounds into tens of thousands of pounds but if a colleague can't pick it up and cram it on shelf in in 10 seconds it's not going to happen and it's not going to come across the store because that you know that's the world that we live in i think stores only have so much time colleagues only have so much time you're going to have people you know who are there just wanting to get the job done as fast as they can and go home which is absolutely fine so it's an interesting one yeah i think you want to do everything you can as a buyer as a brand as a head of sales whatever it might be but i think you do always just need to have that lens of when it gets to store how easy is it going to be how quick is it going to be how can they just get us on shelf and if they put us on shelf backwards are we still going to look good if they put us on sideways we're going to look good yeah but i think it does give you a good understanding i think um because some of that kind of nuanced understanding i think is lost on you when you've only ever done buying or when you've been in marketing whatever it might be so yeah I think so and then I think actually the way we first met was when you were at Oto and actually working with like the milkman and like these amazing milk rounds but from a plant-based milk perspective I thought it was such a cool concept obviously the creamiest oat milk I've had in my life like it's phenomenal product for you like what was the appeal of Oto or how did you get into that side and and what were some of the highlights from that role because it seemed like a slightly different play because I know it eventually went into say Waitrose or other retail but initially it seemed to be doing the milk rounds which i thought was such an interesting angle for a brand to tackle yeah it was very similar in a way to to mighty but i think in a lot of ways it was very different as well when i kind of came into mighty as i said they were already in probably in half of the kind of accounts they want to be in they already had a few kind of major retail listings though they were working with tesco they were working with sainsbury's and there was someone there called sam caldwell who's fantastic been there done everything i think he knew what he was doing kind of inside now whereas the first time i kind of came across auto was on the milk rounds as you say and then it was kind of not too long after that i saw their products in kind of like a plastic milk bottle for the first time which even being a plant-based milk buyer i'd never ever seen that as a as a buyer or as a consumer as someone who had oat milk and i think it really just stuck with me i think i then met with the founder carl who's kind of the second or third founder that i worked with he was just amazing i think he didn't have retail experience again he hadn't worked with the retailers he'd grown like you said from kind of making oat milk in his bathtub to then being the biggest oat milk in the UK on milk rounds in just a few years and it was an exciting one I think I kind of looked at it and thought you know my kind of expertise at that time was getting into retail was working with retailers there was this amazing brand kind of with this untapped potential who wanted to get into retail and it just seemed a perfect match amazing like the things like the like the milk carton as you said I just remember it being so disruptive like first first time I had it was obviously in a actual glass bottle with the foil and from a sustainability point of view it was genius because it's like these get reused up to like 50 times or whatever the number was i'm sure you have it like drummed into your memory but the the one liter like milk carton like everyone if you picture what milk looks like you're going to think of that like one liter two liter like jug um which everyone will kind of picture having a an oat version of that was incredible like i think as you said it was so disruptive and then the quality of the milk it was like a fresh oat milk as well so i don't i don't know if it was pasteurized but it was like definitely it had a shorter life because it was fresher um it from a taste perspective it was just like a world of its own yeah it was it's it's a great way of putting it i think the kind of freshness as you said because i think i think with milk milk as in cow's milk everybody would know that a fresh product is better and i think we used to say if you went into a coffee shop and said you know can i have a latte and if they pulled out a uhd car and a milk you kind of be like what's going on i'm not going to pay five pound for that because it's going to be thinner it's going to taste worse it's going to be lower quality but for whatever reason without milk it's always been the way it's always been UHT and I think some of it kind of comes from Europe and America where we kind of copy a lot of that that kind of fixture and they're more so a UHT market but yeah I think we kind of had the confidence almost to say we know it's a great product we know it tastes good it tastes better than anything else on shelf and part of that I think is the look of it as well and that again some milk you pour them out they're kind of yellowy beige color they don't look great i'm not gonna lie to you ours wasn't that it was kind of like a lovely nice white color it looked like milk it had the same texture consistency and we just thought you know what let's put it in a carton people are familiar with and that's part of buy milk isn't it you go to the fixture you pick it up you check the date on it you can see the milk inside why not do that without milk yeah so disruptive and just so so delicious yeah i think it's good isn't it it's great product very cool discovery and like the milk round i just think this is the the beauty of the like fmcg world it's just like there's different avenues oatly has kind of like tapped everywhere like i've had brian on from minor figures they do a lot like the coffee community world and like really cool coffee shops and all of that and i think oto's like right we're doing milk rounds and it's like having it delivered to your door like my neighbor opposite was having their dairy milk delivered and we were having oatmeal and it was like this is so cool like every morning kind of well every couple of times a week whatever opening the door and having your milk on the doorstep it just threw me back to my childhood when that was the only way we would get milk yeah well two things about i think first of all you're absolutely right i think so many people i think for whatever reason it's almost quite combative i think if you're an oat milk drinker then you hate milk and if you're a milk drinker then you hate oat milk or almond milk whatever it's just not the case like most people drink oat milk in the uk do drink your dairy milk or they consume a dairy products they might have yogurt or cheese or whatever i absolutely love milk i'm gonna be honest i have on cereal every single morning but then if i'm having a coffee i don't ever have oat milk just from a taste point of view um so i think it is interesting like you said that so many of my customers were getting their milk on their doorstep but then popping into the supermarket to pick us up in a plastic carton or vice versa or even getting both on their doorstep um and the second thing yeah i can't believe you're in that t-shirt you've got on the arm i've worked for two different oat milks and yeah my favorite t-shirt you can tell brian brian was just on the podcast so uh yeah i've been uh ripping this t-shirt because it's nice and crisp but it looks comfy t-shirt i will say that they minor figures know their merch i'm not gonna not gonna deny it i know mark from moma is also gonna be listening because he's always teasing me but i keep saying mark just come on the podcast i've actually got a mama t-shirt i'll come clean i was at an event one day walk past and said that looks like a premium t-shirt and one of them said you know what give it a go so it's my painting t-shirt at home but good good stuff i love that it's like a subtle dig there it's not from it it's a good t-shirt i love it but throughout your career and everything you've kind of done to where you are now with Fern and Rosie, what are some of like the standout moments or like big wins or big learnings you've kind of had through that, whether it's like in your Asda days of kind of buying like a success story or people you still know from that or say like with Mighty or Oto, like getting the product somewhere.

25:36Aidan Conry:What are some of your key highlights when you look back and go, yeah, these are some days I'm really proud of? I think there's a few. I think I probably want to see it every role I've done. I think at Mighty, One of the kind of most mental but most exciting things we did is we actually launched into Coles in Australia, which is quite literally on the other side of the world. We didn't have a team on the ground there. We didn't have anyone over there kind of as a rep for the brand. We did it entirely from our leads head office, just kind of working with the distributor. We were waking up at 4 a.m.

26:05sometimes to have calls with them to make sure I was going ahead. Where we were kind of throwing on a hoodie and, you know, sitting in bed in a dark room, dialing in, trying to look professional. I think, again, kind of coming from buying, I'd been at a bigger business working in a buying team. then going into that world where everything was just a little bit more chaotic a little bit more hands-on it was really kind of eye-opening actually as to that was quite a transformative listing for us at that time and that happened just from you know I dare say a throwaway email to a buyer we'd found an email address online we thought you know what let's give it a go let's drop her a note and it turns out actually that she was a big fan that she'd seen us in the UK and that she was an expat living out there and it was really weird honestly I think to see to see it on shelf kind of six months later you know almost from nothing again it's a bit cliched but i think it does just show you that one email sometimes is all it takes it's like the right week the right person the right day of the week even if they just get you know on a friday and they're in a good mood and they're doing a range review that's what it can be and it was very very similar actually i'm at otos i want to move there so the first first listing we had in retail as you said was was waitrose um again i kind of emailed the buyer i found the details online on LinkedIn I think a guest her email you know just a standard format I left my number in my signature and she rang me at half five on a Friday believe it or not you know almost didn't pick it up but then I thought no I'm gonna answer it I picked it up and it was it was the buyer saying they'd never seen anything like it it looked absolutely amazing could I have a call with them at 9am on Monday to discuss so I spent all weekend panicking making a deck for thinking oh my god but then within a week essentially of that call on the Monday we'd kind of had the note through to say that it was going to be x many stores and it's going to be this date and that we're going to work with them on that and again i think it's mad i think at times there can be this hierarchical approach to things i think people see it as this really kind of big beast getting a listing in retail and it can be like i think let's be honest it can be a real pain but but again at times it can just be one email just right place right time right person one buyer who believes in you who thinks you know what this brand is good and then from that we got sainsbury's from that tesco and yeah kind of no looking back they're now now in the past to be an absolutely

28:01Aidan Conry:huge yeah totally agree and i mean tom from mission their whole thing was like if you're going to an event actually making sure you speak to all the key stakeholders introduce yourself say hi to people because you never know like where that can go i think it's so important just to be that person in the room just be like oh yeah spoke to everyone and said hi and did all this we've got some potential good things from a recent supplier conference where it's like yeah i did that and i spoke to people and and these are the the little touch moments where you're like oh i'm just gonna to hang around another five minutes to try and catch someone timing is absolutely everything you like create your own luck and all that bananas but actually just being persistent is a real key but actually not giving up and going you know what i'm gonna try now or let's try this time i found when i was at hurrah the best time to contact the chefs was half nine in the evening so i could schedule emails and go cool i'm gonna ping it out so it goes then because they're gonna basically finish most of their shift there's probably a bit of wash down to do but they might just be quickly checking their emails in that like lol and it always seemed to land really well so it was like yeah you you learn those moments but as you said what's the harm in sending those emails speculatively every now and then just guessing so yeah I absolutely love that now I'd love to flip it the other way to when things haven't gone to plan or things haven't gone so well have you got any experiences that jump to mind straight away where you're like oh yeah that one hurts yeah it's it's tough I think you were just saying then I think we talked about dynamic of emailing buyers and talking to buyers and sending off emails I think when you're a buyer you ignore a lot of emails you just you have to it sounds awful but you're just so time poor non-stop and you're managing at times kind of 50 60 brands all of whom want to be your number one and it's great it's amazing it's one of the best parts of the job but you're kind of in a world where everything is burning down non-stop and you've just got to put out kind of the most important one at any one time i think then moving to account management and moving kind of like brand side in particular to a smaller brand you become the person who's being ignored and not even that but you're now their smallest brand from their smallest supplier in all of the categories they manage and it is tough it really is tough i think at times it can be you know 20 30 emails until you get that one response and then from that one response it all goes and suddenly you start you know even if it's a no at times it can just be a bit of contact and you go back and say okay well why not or can we come into head office and can we talk to you about it and you know from there it goes and then you're kind of talking to them and i think as soon as you're talking to them that's half the battle done the other side of things too i think is that again you all know this better than anyone but when you're talking to a buyer who you know they're sold they're perfect they absolutely love it and it's amazing you're working through that kind of eight nine month critical path working towards a range of you and thousands of stores on the horizon and then you just get that note saying oh by the way i'm going to be leaving and yeah they move on because that's it's how it is isn't it you know buyers kind of have like what two year life cycle and then they get shifted on and again i think it can be good and bad i think sometimes people coming in when they don't know the brand and suddenly you know they're coming in and actually you're already in the fixture and you're doing quite well it's a completely different conversation and i think they view you as something different as a result and that's amazing but yeah when you're not when you're not quite there though and 99 done and then you get a note i don't think there's anything worse personally but in this job at least yeah especially when you're like we've had a recent note from waitrose and it still stings me i think it's it's one that everyone just assumes we're in because we'd be such a good fit and i think our frozen pomegranate would be absolutely amazing but for whatever reason it's like no now's not the time and i'm like fine yeah it's not not yet like it's gonna happen it will happen and i'm confident it will but it's just yeah it's it's the you've done all the work you're just hanging on and going come on come on and then it doesn't quite pay off and you're like okay on to the next thing like what else can we do then okay and i think that's that's the beauty of learning these rejections and understanding not every conversation will be successful and not every listing will happen when you want it to just having that plan and that spread and doing what you're doing to build the brand outside of it i think so important and coming back to fern and rosie i think that's what you guys do really well as you said with with tesco like these shippers you couldn't avoid them on socials you guys are great children in need like those are great things to be involved in looking ahead for 2026 and what we're doing now um is there anything on the horizon that you guys can chat about it nbd anything exciting was it um you recently launched a new flavor i say recently i'm sure it was a few months back now but i saw a different a different jam i want to say it was mango is that right absolutely spot on yeah i'm very impressed yeah we did we've done mango which is yeah kind of like the first i think it's the first of its type don't hold me to that i think we're the first to do a mango jam it's just something fun i think every event that we're at even if someone's not a jam fan which is pretty rare we do get people who just like don't like jam you know don't need it as soon as you say we've got a mango one i think it just immediately gets them back in and they go mango jam i've never heard of that or again if there's you know someone who's an absolute die hard strawberry jam fan who's had it every day for 40 years and then you suddenly say well if you give them mango a go or if you tried it in your yogurt if you tried it in your porridge and they go do you know what i'll take one home and i think again the best compliment is we're down at as i say tesco all the time we never say no to a sampling opportunity with tesco because i think as you were saying before you never know who you're going to bump into you never know who's going to be there like a 30 second interaction can lead to a listing or a new category or whatever it might be but the amount of people that we've had come up to us who tried us a year ago or you know who said to us oh maybe you should do a blackcurrant or maybe you should do an april maybe you should do a mango they come back and see it and they go oh my god you actually did it it's amazing it's it's genuinely really nice i think it's quite heartwarming um and yeah i'd say the other kind of big thing too is that we've just so literally two days ago we've launched seedless products as well onto a cardo which is also really really kind of exciting i think we always use the analogy of kind of juice again of that i think people view seedless jam as quite childish and i think it's one of those things like oh i don't like seeds but actually there's a huge chunk of people who just don't like seeds and if you look at juice there's smooth juice there's juice with bits if you don't like bits in juice you're never going to buy juice with bits and it doesn't matter how good it is or how premium it is or you know how tasty yeah i think we're the same i think we we're hoping that's going to kind of unlock a new bit of the market seedless as well tends to be cheaper they say it's not quite as exciting it's quite functional we're hoping we can bring that kind of same fun same quality same provenance to new shoppers love that no absolutely yeah knowing some some fussy kids i think that whole like seedless jam yeah absolutely makes sense and i can imagine it's going to do very well so i'm excited to see how that goes just because i'm wary of time last few questions for you for anyone who is thinking of getting into the food drink world like what would your kind of top tip or top advice be a good question i think just do it Honestly, I know it sounds a bit cheesy, a bit easy, but I think if you genuinely have a passion for it, I think if you do want to get involved in food, whether that's starting a brand, whether that is a bit of a career change going again from being a buyer to an account manager or vice versa, or even just your first role in FMCG thinking it looks a bit of fun, it genuinely is.

34:53I think you kind of need that motivation, you need that pull in the first place, if that makes sense. I think if you're the type of person who's looking at it and thinking that that does seem fun it seems different it seems quite quite challenging I'll be honest but quite high energy and rewarding as a result it really really is but I think you just have to be aware coming in that you know there's going to be low days there's going to be high days there's going to be everything in between there's going to be days when you're driving four hours for a trade show you know a boot full of jam and then when you get there you're having to unload jam for an hour in the rain and it's dark and it's cold and it's it's good fun it really is because then the next day you get to see the clip of that and you get to sample to 2 ,000 people all of whom love jam and it's good fun so yeah I really would just say that whatever it is whatever role that is that someone's debating I think if you genuinely think it looks looks like you'd suit it if it'd be fun just give it a go.

35:39Aidan Conry:No great advice I think it's really important just to pursue all sorts of avenues and if you think you might be interested in it it doesn't mean that has to be your job for the rest of your life you can just go after a year or after a few months you go actually this isn't for me and I think that's what people aren't scared to do nowadays which is very different 10 years ago when if you jumped around various roles so like why are you moving roles so much whereas now it's kind of like oh okay is it like you're finding your passion you didn't sit there like what i don't see that as a negative if you see someone who has moved around a few roles it's like well yeah clearly they're they're looking for that right fit and where they can actually excel so yeah just do it love it i completely agree too just on that moving around i do think yeah i agree with you i think it's an outdated view you know the whole like you need to stay there two years you need to be there three years before you move i just think there's never a time where you can't move there's never a time you can't try something new i think it's easy to convince yourself all these reasons why you shouldn't or why somebody might look at it and think you know why did they move or was it not the right fit but you know if something's not the right fit if you're getting in on a friday and you kind of hate your job or if you're getting in and looking at another job on linkedin thinking oh should i apply for it you probably want to do it you probably already you know sold if you like you've made that decision so i couldn't agree more i do just think just do it it's never a bad time to move there's never a bad time to try something new yeah give it a go yeah i spoke at a sales conference a couple of years ago proper imposter syndrome because you're in a room full of like super experienced sales people and then it's me someone did a presentation saying i think it was like the average cycle of most sales people is like two to three years in a role and then they can either progress up that role or move somewhere else and that's like very much the done thing and i was like oh wow like that really like struck a chord with me because it's like it's a sure two years or the prets two years packed is definitely gonna be more than two years i can say that now but yeah i think it's it's having that view of like okay like progression and evolving and feeling valued and i think that's the beauty of when you work in somewhere you are really passionate about you can see the the winds the highs the lows i think it's just it's a brilliant industry to be part of and why i love talking about it so much so um final question this is the music one so i ask everyone this is there a particular song or anthem that if you think back through all of your career anything that stands out or is there a fern and rosy song you're like yeah this is our like this is our song do you know of every question this is the one that's had me most nervous i'm not gonna lie um i think there's maybe two i think the first one's very very cheesy and we have to apologize for this but my favorite band is pearl jam and i think it's funny that of all the things in the world i could have worked in selling is jam and i did say that in my first ever interview with Rachel I think she found her funny too and and here we are so yeah I thought I'd throw that in but a song in terms of a song I think that I'd say sums it up I'm a big big David Bowie fan as well my favorite song of his is Time it's like a little kind of smaller track off a lad insane but I think that sums it up I think when I first moved into account management I'd come from buying I thought I was pretty good at buying I wasn't the best buyer in the world but I'd done a few different jobs I moved into account management and just thought I was awful I've never felt as bad at a job honestly for probably 12 months where I just thought everything I was doing was going wrong everything I was doing was taking ages nothing ever seemed to go kind of as expected if that makes sense there was never anything that was just seamless but then a year later 18 months later two jobs later it's not changed too much I think actually it's just because there are hiccups there are there are constantly things where it is going wrong and it's not a bad thing I think I had a lens almost at that time of that again I think coming from a a big retail background, big business, from buying.

39:08You've got dates, you've got deadlines, things have to go to plan. Actually, I think the fun is the opposite of that. And I think, yeah, after a period of time, you always look back and think, do you know what, it wasn't that bad. A year later, you look back and go, do you know what, I wasn't that bad. I was actually learning new things. I was picking new things up. It just doesn't feel like it at the time, does it? It's kind of chaos and, yeah, a lot of long nights. But I love it. I really do. I think no matter how it feels at the moment, give it time, give it a year or two, you'll look back and go, yeah, do you know what, it was great.

39:33Aidan Conry:love that and my wife will be especially happy now there's some Bowie on the uh on the pod on the on the song list we've got some Blondie some Bowie on there now um yeah it's a very eclectic mix I was gonna go 80s I was looking at my my Spotify list before and it was it's just like a list of rock grunge in 80s and I was like oh yeah I did I did wonder if it was gonna be something like pump up the jam I was like it's there it's a sitter it is I had to avoid it I was like there's a few there's a few heavy hits there that I can't go with but yeah love that no it's been fascinating and going back for your career, I think there's a few people I spoke to now have done the buyer to brand or brand to buyer switch.

40:09Aidan Conry:And I think it's a really interesting dynamic to take into your career and do what you do. But it's been really kind of fun to know more about Fern and Rosie and what you guys are doing, I think is absolutely fantastic. For anyone who wants to get hold of you or find out more about kind of the brand, like where is the best place to do that? Yeah, just on LinkedIn is always the best place. I think I'm genuinely always open to it. I think a message takes 10 seconds. I think if you have a question that you want to ask anything honestly just reach out it takes 10 seconds as I say to see a note and to fire off a response so yeah always happy to love that and I'll link to the website and all that good stuff as well no it's been brilliant thank you so much for your time as I said I'm a huge fan of the brand and everything you're all doing yeah I'm excited to see what 2026 holds for you all amazing honestly thank you so much for having me and yeah it's been good fun hopefully it's going to be a big big year for Fenerous fab well to everyone listening thank you again and we will see you on the next episode goodbye