2DO Before I Die

Just another Pebble day...

Another typical Pebble day…starts with a strong tea and the phone ringing. Usually I will be sorting through the mail to stay on top of any outstanding bills to pay or invoices to chase. I make it a rule to call at least one customer a day – which could be an individual bar or a distributor. I am always amazed at how important this kind of contact is and people really value a call and a friendly voice that asks how things are going.

A big chunk of my day is also spent on ongoing activities in marketing (i.e. goodie-bags for festivals, organising promotions and competitions); product development (what’s our next pack size? Shall we have a different case for the packets?) and other projects, such as building an online shop. Last year I spent a lot of time ‘on the van’ with one of my distributors and helped to sell the product directly to our customers. It’s sometimes a pretty humbling experience, but ultimately the best way to learn about your market, product and consumer.

Point of Sale

I just had a chat with one of our distributors, www.stratfordfinefoods.com, who gave us some very important feedback I thought was worth mentioning. In most of our outlets, Pebble is ‘selling itself’, i.e. it’s enough for bar manager to put the packs in a bowl or something on the bar and the product sells through nicely enough. But what if there isn't enough shelf-space in some bars? What if they'd prefer to ‘hang’ the nuts on cards? As a result, I have just decided to kick off a project with our supplier in Brazil to design what’s called a ‘shelf-ready’ box, as well as a solution to ‘hang the peanuts’. It’s part of an ongoing process to keep innovating and figuring out ways to get Pebbles to the market.

Branding

By far the most enjoyable bit of setting up Pebble Peanuts for me has been creating a new brand from scratch. Getting the brand right is crucial for any new product launch, everybody knows that. But once you have to do it yourself, it becomes clear that the most obvious things are not as easy as they look.

With my ‘consultant hat’ on, I was happy to analyze our market, our competitors, create sales forecasts and dissect our supply-chain - but all of this doesn’t necessarily tell you what colour the packaging should have. That’s where creativity, gut feeling and some late nights sitting in front of a computer screen with a packaging designer come in - and I was lucky to work with one of the best. I have always been very passionate about brands and a big supporter of companies who dared to stay true to their corporate identity - from Brasso Silverpolish to Guiness beer.

What I wanted to create was something I saw in my ‘favourite brands’ - an instant history, authenticity and yet something that fits into today’s world. I took my ideas for Pebble Peanuts to good friends of mine, who just set up a design company in Brighton, England (check out www.notonlybutalso.net and shared my enthusiasm for this product. Over the course of six months and many, many drafts, dead ends and left turns, we arrived at what today is the brand of Pebble Peanuts.

Latest news and a few tips...

Last week was amazing. We struck up a relationship with a new distributor, who just started ordering a lot of boxes of Pebble Peanuts. Let’s hope this is an ongoing trend leading up to a ‘beautiful friendship’. In the course of the last year, we painfully realised that the key to launching a new consumer product is getting your distribution network right – we had early successes with smaller operators, but selling peanuts is essentially a volume business. We now have UK-wide access to our clients and hopefully will secure more nation-wide accounts (besides e.g. the City Screen cinemas, where we are currently stocked outside of London).

I had a comment from Dave on my last blog entry about any business books I’d recommend for ‘starting a business’. There are a few, but by far the most helpful for me was 'The Definitive Business Plan: The Fast-track to Intelligent Business Planning for Executives and Entrepreneurs', which is published by the FT. It’s a great book taking you through all the necessary steps in an easy-to-follow way with lots of useful examples. It’s my reference bible. I also love reading books like Barbara Cassani’s account of starting the airline ‘Go’ or Howard Schultz's ‘Pour your heart into it’. These ‘success-stories’ always have to be taken with a pinch of salt, but certainly give you a flavour of what’s going on in the minds of people who just did it.

          

Leaving your comfort zone... Anyone

Leaving your comfort zone...

Anyone would start a business, if it were easy. At least that’s what I’ve been telling myself. Because once I had this peanuts project going I realised that it requires a unique set of skills that simply can’t be taught. As I’ve come to understand it, these include ‘hard skills’ such as book-keeping and cash flow management, but also ‘soft’ skills, like managing your own emotional involvement in your business (!), your stamina to pull through hard times and the will-power to succeed.

And for me, there was also another issue involved. Having previously advised companies on a boardroom level as a consultant, it’s been a very humbling experience lately to suddenly go around pubs and bars, selling my bags of peanuts like a door-to-door salesman to very grumpy and overworked bar managers. There have been times I just wanted to throw my peanuts into the nearest river. But one thing I’ve learned since this whole thing started, is that it’s times like these you have to pull through, because you do seem to learn the most when it ‘hurts’—when you leave your comfort zone. I’m getting better at all this, I think, and this week has seen some glimpses of some genuinely good news, but more on this soon...

Setting up (everything takes longer than you think)

Setting up your own business is not easy – especially if you don’t have the cash. A key obstacle for many startups is securing adequate funding, mostly – so I think – to actually pay the founders of a new company a salary to enable them to simply survive and continue to pay their bills (especially in an expensive city like London). My personal ambition was to create a business that could grow out of cashflow (note: I have not achieved that yet) and one that does not require me to borrow money from the bank.

Having worked in the consulting business, I realised it was possible for me to earn my income through freelance consulting work, which provided me with the means to continue living my life, the time to work on my own business and a steady inflow of money I could use to set up. But of course there are pros and cons to this approach. On the plus-side, it helped me to ‘drip-feed’ my venture over a longer period of time, which taught me how to spend the money I invested in my own business wisely (or foolishly). I also retained control over everything that was happening and could thoroughly research my next steps. On the minus-side, however, it’s an approach that requires patience, a certain propensity to withstand pain (will it work, won’t it work?) and it all simply takes time.

That’s a point I want to stress: when you start your business, keep in mind it’s going to take longer than you think. In the case of Pebble Peanuts, it took me about a year from having the first discussions with the producer to writing my first invoice to my first client here in the UK for Pebble Peanuts (the Big Chill Festival -- still want to frame that invoice). Only after I had put all my savings into developing the product, and being able to show potential investors the ‘real thing’ could I secure some seed funding to help me pay for things such as website development or a PR campaign.