Passion doesn’t necessarily equal profit October 22 2012, 0 Comments

So what was next for us?? I read a story about how baobabs were transported by African slaves as food to the island of St Croix, the seeds from these pods where planted by the slaves and are known today as the ‘jumbo tree’. A drink used to be produced from the the fruits of the baobab trees that grew there, but apparently when Coca-Cola arrived it disappeared off the island!

I had the idea of producing a baobab lemonade and as a joke I made a label from some photographic paper stuck it on a bottle and uploaded it to our website to see if there would be any interest! Guess I had the shock of my life when Radox called me a couple of weeks later and asked if they could have a few samples to try! Considering I hadn't even done the formulation you could understand my slight nervousness!! After a very stressful weekend I came up with a formulation and to my surprise my 5 year old daughter loved it!
 
I sent a few samples to Radox and they came back to me with an order of 400 Bottles, result! The lemonade was used for their Baobab shower gel launch party! Sadly after producing a batch run of 1500 bottles over a few months with a small bottling plant in Kingsbridge, we were unable to produce it on a regular bases as it proved to be a little bit of a logistical nightmare! That lemonade was absolutely delicious and is still a product for the future....


The next leg of the journey, was attending the ‘Taste of the West’ trade show in the South West, which had a very positive lead! We met the Sales Accounts Manager who worked for Duerr’s and Sons, which is one of the largest jam manufacturers in the UK,. Duerr’s produces ‘Super Jam’ for the young entrepreneur Doherty Frasier. 

 

The Manager was very interested in working with us as he had never seen or heard of Baobab Jam. We were obviously very excited about the prospect of this, as part of our business plan was to have the production out sourced, allowing us to focus on the marketing and logistical side of the business.

 

We sent him the formulation and after a couple of weeks we got a reply where they thought the product was difficult to market.

Nonetheless, we persevered and entered our product into the highly prestigious ‘Great Taste Award’ and we were chuffed to bits when we won a two star gold award for our Baobab Jam.

Next we were fortunate to get the product into Planet Organic and subsequently into Wholefoods including numerous retail outlets and farm shops in our local area.

However, we still weren’t making enough money to reinvest and as a small business it was proving very difficult, especially in a recession to try and raise any more capital but even harder with a brand name and fruit that most people could not remember or pronounce!

A good friend of mine from Zambia was really taken by the idea of what we were doing. She set up our very first blog and I’m very grateful that Marisa introduced us to this and she was also very helpful in taking some of the jam back to Brighton and helped with getting the product listed in Infinity foods wholesale. 

She also took back some our our Jam to the Mthanjala Women's Cooperative in Zambia.

Marisa completed the journey for us by taking our product back to its original home where we discovered it.

 3 1/2 years down the line we reached the point where basically we couldn’t afford to promote the business any more! Incredibly we received an offer to supply Holland and Barrett! We thought this was the perfect opportunity for us to finally take our product/s National. They offered us a 3 month trail and if it proved successful they would roll out our products nationwide! Only one problem we didn’t have any money to purchase the promotional free stock Holland & Barrett required, we approached the non profit organization we worked with for assistance with the trial stock and unfortunately did not secure it and had to turn the offer down.

On the one hand I felt in was a great opportunity and on the other I thought why didn't Holland & Barrett just purchase the promotional stock or at least meet us half way. But thats not how large multiples work!

This was the lowest point for myself and Sophie after all the hard work, sleepiness nights food festivals hours cooking and packing jam and powder and after almost 4 years of not making any money we had to make drastic decision between closing the business or keeping and it running at a bare minimum.


Also around this time my second daughter was born, and due to health reasons with our child Sophie and I had to minimize outgoings of the business but also where we had to focus on taking care of her. 

 Sophie returned to work as soon as possible and I became the main carer of my daughter. 

We continued to fulfill our online orders and to the wholesaler Tree Of Life.


We are very grateful to the Eden Project who helped keep the business going through their purchase of bulk baobab from us.
 

All along we felt there was something in the business and closing it wasn’t the right way forward when I look back and can’t help but think that was one of the hardest things I did was setting up Yozuna! 

 Its not easy for any small producer and is real cut throat business out there. You need enthusiasm, passion, perseverance, a consistent positive attitude, but more importantly you need the numbers!

I learned something very important that passion doesn’t necessarily equal profit and there’s a big difference between being passionate and being profitable.

I have no regrets I’ve experienced many mistakes, realized how important they are and learnt from them. Moving forward with the new outlook on our new brand name and range of African Inspired products. 

 

I present to you.