Innocent | Smart Calls and Screw Ups

Smart Calls and Screw Ups

Anyway – called it ‘Smart Calls and Screw Ups – Things We’ve Learnt’. Richard started by relaying his entrepreneurial roots working in a dog biscuit factory, picking biscuits off the floor. When he stated he could do things quicker if he used a brush, he was told ‘son, you are the brush’. Decided at that point that there had to be a better way to earn a living!

Main goal in setting up in business – to make life ‘a little bit better and a little bit easier’. Innocent Smoothies came about because they made easier the task of being healthy.

From a Supply Chain perspective, Richard and colleagues decided to keep the Innocent IP but outsource the heavy lifting – the producing, packing and storing. Innocent have gone from a £0.4m business in 1999 to a projected £160m in 2011, and now sell their products in 13 different countries.

His story highlights how Supply Chain risks can threaten the entire business’s survival, and how Innocent has learnt to manage risk.

• In 2000 their sole bottler won business with Coca Cola, and announced without warning that they were stopping making bottles for Innocent. They had to rush out and procure standard bottles immediately.
• Up until 2007, they only had one manufacturer, which proved to be a major risk as they went out of business.
• In 2008 Innocent effectively ran out of money, and had to sell shares to Coca Cola to survive.

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What Richard has learnt running his business over the last 12 years

Know Thy Purpose

Have a clearly articulated sense of purpose. This is a feature of all great companies, from Henry Ford (‘I will build a motorcar for the great multitude’) to Google (‘organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful’).

It’s the People, Stupid

Everything a business does is as a result of a human being. An organisation is just a group of humans working on a common objective. Richard stated that things started to go right or wrong with recruitment, and that the key was to recruit people who think like entrepreneurs, and to create in them loyalty, ownership and engagement.

‘Having someone who doesn’t play by the values is toxic’. To reinforce this point, he shared a comment made by Dan Walker, the Head of Talent at Apple, when asked a question about people who don’t share Apple’s values. His reply? ‘I’d rather have a hole (in the organisation) than an ‘asshole’.

Ethics Help

‘We want to leave things better than when we found them’.

• Innocent have 5 Key Ethical Strategies:
• Natural Healthy Products
• Ethical ingredients
• Sustainable packaging
• Resource efficient production
• Share the profits (Innocent give 10% of their profits to charity, in the regions where the fruit comes from)
• 95% of people say they are proud to work at Innocent

Details Count

Small details make all the difference. Give people a reason to be loyal to you. As an example, they have replaced the traditional ‘use by’ date with ‘enjoy by’ because they don’t want people to ‘use their drinks, they want them to ‘enjoy them.

• Listen – it’s free and creates value
• Be authentic – what is presented externally must be represented internally
• Use technology – (Twitter, Facebook) to provide real-time consumer feedback.

He finished up with Q/A session, where he stated that after he thinks that their current advertising is rubbish (a really refreshing and honest comment!) and after listening to the Supply Chain sessions he felt that given that they had spent £20M on advertising with virtually zero return, they should have spent it on product development and Supply Chain improvements.

All in all a brilliant keynote, honest and forthright from one of the UK’s leading entrepreneurs.