IMAGINE THERE'S NO JEAVONS,
IT'S EASY IF YOU TRY.
Imagine there's no Smootches, no Rabbles too...
When we set out, we naively thought the world of food and confectionery and shops and supermarkets would embrace us, be biting our hands off to get their hands on our unique range. Little did we know.
Our naivety started* with us getting the wrong idea that that is what happens. We clearly remember listening to an interview with James Watt of BrewDog on Jeremy Vine’s Radio 2 show on 12 February 2016 (we googled to fact check!), around the time of our launch, talking about making beer in his basement and the next thing Tesco placing a massive order which he lied he could supply, so he had to upscale urgently to fulfil the contract. It’s obvious to us now that that would be an abridged version of the story, the whole process of what he actually went though, or quite possibly a bullsh*t story (given BrewDog’s PR history), but at the time we remember thinking, if Tesco were that keen to get a new beer, probably fairly indistinguishable from most of the other ones on their shelves, then their minds are going to be blown when they see what genius unique creations we have!
*it actually started with Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, when Caractacus invents a new sweet and Lord Scrumptious signs a contract with him at once, telling him he’s a genius and going to be rich. But we knew that was fiction, didn’t we? 😉
We thought we were taking the right steps by getting help from government funded advisors and entrepreneurial hubs, but no one in business (has ever) realised quite how pioneering our creations are. Looking back our knowledge of the industry and market we were getting ourselves into should have been gauged before we were encourged to get started. It’s of course our own fault for not knowing what we were letting ourselves in for, but you don’t know what you don’t know. We’ve learnt the ropes as we’ve gone on, we are still learning, and the more we learn we realise there’s even more that we don’t know! But also, the more we know, we realise what a brutal industry it is and we’re not really enticed to be a part of it.
What we have always known though is that the potential of our creations is far bigger than us two novices could ever achieve alone. We’re aware of our great strengths, but we also know our limitations. And that’s surely ok; nobody expects the conductor to write the symphony. But finding a conductor has been futile.
Right from the get-go we have never been too proud or afraid to ask for help, from anywhere and everywhere. But we soon realised that very few people would have any relevant help they could offer, and those who could are the ones who are busy with their own problems, running their own businesses. And there are others who could only help financially - investors, shareholders - but not practically, with their motivation being purely profit related rather than ethos.
We have had our hopes raised several times when we’ve made a connection with successful individuals or businesses who we share synergy with, who see our potential and could aid our progress, but these relationships have come to nothing. We know it’s not our products that have dissuaded them, so we assume it’s our reluctance to partake in the usual game of business that has.
We know that as a family business with a secret recipe we’re an an unattractive proposition to investors. Family businesses have ethics and want to retain a portion of control, and those with knowledge of the secret recipe will maintain a certain amount of power. These things get in the way of maximising profits for investors, so if investors do invest in a businesses like ours, the usual plan is to get the family out (out of the way) within a few years, this is what some see as the original owners ’selling out’, when they might’ve been forced out. ‘Business' is ugly!
We live in a time where what was tolerated as normal behaviour in the past is rightly not acceptable now, and we hope this will extend to the world of business practice in the future. In many fields it can be difficult to get ahead, unless you’re prepared to do a deal with the devil, which doesn’t sit right with us. We know of so many small businesses (not just ours) where people are slogging their guts out, working long hours, getting in to debt or making next to no money, as they chase an elusive investor, buyer, or supermarket contract, which once got doesn’t even mark the end of their (financial) problems, it’s usually the beginning of more. Unlike us some of these businesses ARE paying for help, playing the game by the rules, and still can’t reach the carrot on the stick. We’re not prepared to play the game where investors and supermarkets hold all the cards. If only all the small suppliers could withhold their goods, so that their worth would be realised and some of the power-hold rebalanced.
How many other brilliant producers of innovative products don’t become widely available, not because their products aren’t great, but because of the obstacles they have to face to maybe stand a chance of getting anywhere one day? There is an illusion of help and opportunities for businesses, and an illusion of an interest in innovation, but we’ve found that the reality doesn’t live up to the hype, as supermarkets are (no doubt rightly from their perspective) risk averse and more interested in profitability than finding and nurturing greatness. What you will find widely available on shelves is not necessarily the best products that are out there, they’re the best safe bets that buyers have found from producers who are prepared to play the game.
To get into supermarkets, it costs companies a lot! Bigger companies can afford the ‘game’, and it’s rigged against smaller companies. Your prices have to be ‘competitive’, and smaller companies can’t be expected to match the prices bigger companies can manage. Supermarkets also require suppliers to pay for regular promotions, special deals that cost companies thousands every few months (shelf positioning, price reduction deals etc.). It’s a rigged system, a race to the bottom on price (and quality), to ensure only the big companies take up shelf space.
Was running a business always this hard? Could you grow a successful family business with loans from your local bank manager? Did supermarkets ever see producers at local markets and ask if they could supply them, rather than the other way round with the producer pitching? When did it become usual that the way to make it big was by giving away shares to someone whose aim is to oust the founder and sell the company on to a bigger company? It’s all too ugly for us. Supermarkets have too much power, and investors too much greed.
We have been out of our factory lease for over six months and our landlord has been more than understanding about us being hesitant about signing a new one. He was hopeful for us that our Aldi’s Next Big Thing exposure would change our fortunes and waited until after our episode’s broadcast to get in touch. He was visibly sad to see how deflated we were that it hadn’t. If we felt we were making any progress we would persevere and sign a new lease without hesitation, but we haven’t, we’ve merely survived. The definition of stupid is doing the same thing and expecting different results, and as we’re not stupid we know that all we’d be doing is continuing our Sisyphean struggle. We’ve been round so many corners, we know now that no-one is going to be round the next corner to help us.
We had recently been in talks with a larger vegan company about occupying a section in one of their factories, but this didn’t materialise due to their own business plans changing. This wouldn’t have been an ideal move, but it would have got us out of our current rut. (We would have relocated to an area we have no affinity with, and we would have had to become nut-free, so Rabbles and Dynamites would have been temporarily shelved until we found a solution to produce them elsewhere.) We have also contacted another vegan confectioner in our region, as sharing a premises would make remaining in the South East more affordable to us, but it wasn’t something they were interested in.
We’ve kept going for so long as there has usually been something positive on the horizon which could change our fortunes, but that horizon is forever out of reach, and we realise that we’re on a treadmill and we should wind down our current operation while we’re still slightly ahead. We informed our landlord last week that we can’t commit to a new lease, so we’ll be looking to move out in the not too distant future. Hopefully he will let us remain in occupation while a new tenant is found, and hopefully any new tenant won’t want to move in until after Christmas, and may also want to retain some of the improvements we’ve made, rather than us have the expense of stripping our unit back to the shell we moved in to.
What comes after this for us, we don’t currently know. We have all of our recipes, and equipment needed to make our amazing products, but we’ll have nowhere to do this from. It’s ludicrous that our range will cease to exist for the sake of 1,500 sq. ft. and however many thousands of pounds. So we hope we can find a way to enter a new and better phase.
The next phase could be having more control of our future, with our own property, and take the opportunity to reimagine our production methods. We know of other family confectionery businesses who have survived because they own their premises rather than been at anyone else’s mercy, and one has told us he’s seen many businesses go under because they’ve been ‘hammered by overheads’. If we’ve managed to pay rent of £30k per year for the past six years, we’d afford to pay the mortgage to own a business property in a more affordable area outright within the same length of time, thus securing our future, providing we had the funds for a healthy deposit to get a mortgage in the first place.
We’ll deal with the outcome of our conversation with our landlord first, and hopefully Christmas, and then work towards what could be next. In lieu of any of you finding us some wealthy / supportive / vegan / altruistic / philanthropic / celebrity / influencer / business types to borrow money from to facilitate a move, we’ll work on crowdfunding.
Although this might be upsetting news, don't panic! It's not over! It's just the end of a chapter, and hopefully the next chapter will be the greatest yet! Imagine...!
ONWARDS AND UPWARDS!
Jeavons Toffee Ltd
Unit S, Rich Industrial Estate, Avis Way, BN9 0DU, Newhaven
