Jacob Fruitfield - Cool, Clean (and Local) Hero
August 28, 2008
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BY GERARD TANNAM
BY GERARD TANNAM
Size matters. Or, at least, that is what the big players like to think. Here in Ireland, we have been more aware than most that size is relative. More than most too, we have taken sides when the little streets have hurled themselves against the great. Unlike the Swiss, we don’t do neutral terribly well. Almost always, our sympathies are with the small player, the one who is outweighed and outgunned, and we take more than a little pleasure at the prospect of seeing the lumbering giant brought to earth with a crash. But such an outcome is by no means inevitable. The playing field is littered with the bodies of the diminutive and the gallant and for every David who stands triumphant over a fallen Goliath, there are dozens more who lie beaten and crushed in the wake of a rampaging giant.
In the Irish context, Jacob Fruitfield is one of the big players. With sales projected to hit 110 million euro in 2005, and a number of Ireland’s best-known food brands on its books, the company enjoys an enviable position in the Irish market. Enter Goliath or a very close relative of his. But in the global context, the company is a small player. Each of its brands compete with brands owned and championed by the largest food companies in the world. These leviathans can dig into pockets a hundred times deeper than those of a local company. Their scale is difficult to imagine. When Heinz or Unilever or Proctor & Gamble lumber into view, they block out the sun. Enter David. Or Chef or Silvermints or Jacob’s Fig Rolls.
So how does a big fish in a small pond, fished by giants, go about its business and what lessons might we learn if we wish to take on the big players? Recently, I met with Michael Carey, Chief Executive and majority shareholder of the stand-alone, wholly Irish-owned Jacob Fruitfield food business. Three years ago, the Jacobs and Fruitfield companies in Ireland were owned by multinational corporations, with the Fruitfield business losing money for its owners. Since then, Michael and his partners have integrated the two companies, invested in their brands, launched over a hundred new products and taken on the global giants. The company is turning a profit and has recently won the Ernst & Young Industry Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2005.
For Michael, whose background includes senior management roles with a number of global food companies such as Kellogg’s and Groupe Danone, the approach was simple, “As a small company, our competitive advantages are in being local, flexible and right for the local market. For Heinz or McVities, their advantage lies in being the lowest cost producer, about being a big, big player, about having brands that can work in lots of markets in the same way.”
Whilst these brands can work across many territories, Michael has also seen the difficulties of applying global marketing strategies in a local market. “We can do things with a brand that is absolutely right for the Irish market. Our competitors, pretty much all of them, have to do things with their brands that are right for international markets. We can look at the Irish market and see what’s working and what doesn’t work.”
But isn’t this approach also available to the multinational owner, who can simply work on some variation of a theme beloved of the big players: Think Global, Act Local? For Michael, it is very much a question of priority. Put simply, the big players are too easily distracted. “They have bigger fish to fry. We don’t. This is all the fish we have. So we give it the focus and we invest in the brands.” This approach extends to new product development where Irish companies have traditionally been the poorer relations of their international cousins. The company has recently completed the acquisition of The Real Irish Food Company and plans to step up its innovation activity. It has also signed a 20-year brand licence for the use of the Bewley’s brand in food outlets, another great old Irish brand adding to a growing local portfolio.
So what exactly does it mean to act local? “It’s not about putting up an Irish flag over the packaging and saying ‘These are Irish brands’. We have to compete with the international brands. Chef has to be as credible as Heinz, Silvermints as Polo. We very rarely make reference to the fact that these brands are Irish in terms of advertising. We don’t apologetically present ourselves as an Irish brand in that sense. It’s about being closer to and more clearly understanding the needs of the Irish consumer. And, of course, we have heritage. Lots of the multinationals invent that heritage and we don’t because we have got real heritage.”
But aren’t consumers, particularly teenagers, looking for brands that are international? “No, there are obviously some very powerful multinational brands that appeal in that way. But customers in the food business seek out realness and localness and some understanding in terms of where the brand comes from, where the product is made whether that is in a factory or a bakery or a place they can trust. I think local brands in food have a bright future.”
Mention Steve Silvermint or ask how Jacob’s put the figs into the figrolls and you will bring a smile to the face of the average Irish customer (or, at least, one of a certain age). Is there a conflict between being a business or a brand with heritage and being innovative? “No, we enjoy having a strong starting position. Take, for example, some of the more traditional Fruitfield brands, Little Chip and Old-time Irish marmalade; these are long-established brands in sectors that are pretty mature. We want to take that strength of maturity, that stability and move that brand on from that platform.
We’re just about to launch a range of premium jams and marmalades under the Fruitfield brand with a higher fruit content and a more premium position. But we couldn’t do that if we didn’t have the Fruitfield base to start from. If we were starting from scratch, the chances of successfully launching brands in areas where we see opportunities would be nil. You couldn’t do it without a name.
We’re helped by the fact that we have so many brands with a strong heritage. Of course, we also have to make sure that we don’t undermine the position of the brand. We might get some short-term sales but if it’s going to do damage to the core brand, we won’t do it.”
For Jacob Fruitfield then, a local David taking on the multinational Goliaths, success in the Irish market comes down to keeping it fresh, keeping it real and playing to your strengths. In that sense, and in this neighbourhood, it’s clear that size really does matter.
About The Writer
Gerard is the founding Managing Director of Islandbridge, a business that delivers brand direction, planning and communications across a wide range of sectors including retail, property, hospitality and tourism. Recent clients include Temple Country Retreat & Spa, Musgraves Food Services, Choice Hotels, The Westport Woods Hotel, Liffeyside Properties, Littlejohn Health Centre, and DIT School of Hospitality Management.gerard@islandbridge.com
If you would like to tell your own brand story, please get in touch with Gerard on +353 1 495 3330 or
The Blend – A Meeting of Minds
August 27, 2008
To find out more about Island Bridge
please go to the end of the article
BY GERARD TANNAM
How Calm Could I Rest?
When you hear the plaudits that greet the success of fresh thinking, you could be forgiven for thinking that it’s easy to be entrepreneurial. It’s true that with hindsight, the route to a new market can seem almost inevitable. As we retrace the steps from finishing-line back to starting block, the progress made by the new venture appears steady and sure. Even the demeanour of the soon-to-be-successful entrepreneur strikes us as fresh and untroubled. They stride, apparently without any great effort, breathing easily and moving naturally towards their prize.
The failed venture on the other hand is met with much shaking of heads, clucking of tongues and regretful calls of ‘I-told-you-so’. Here too, the outcome seems predestined. From the standpoint of recent downfall, the initiative appears risky and ill conceived from the outset. In contrast to the easy progress made by their successful counterpart, the steps of the defeated entrepreneur seem dogged (even stubborn) and painful. When the time comes to pick over the bones of failure, everyone else knows best. All are agreed that it would have been better if the impulsive risk-taker had kept it simple and stuck to doing what they did best.
And yet, as we know from experience, nothing changes if nothing changes. It’s not just madness that has us doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome. Honest endeavour has many of us reluctant to step off the treadmill and strike out on our own.
Not In This Wide World
The entrepreneur will be familiar with this dilemma. Subsistence or even modest success can make a conservative of the best of us and sometimes it’s much easier to stay with what you know than venture something new. It’s particularly challenging for the business that has its roots in manufacturing or production. The technician in us argues for the certainty of craft. There is a strong temptation to keep our head down and heed the words of caution from the often older and wiser heads around us.
When I was younger, this note of caution was often struck with the suggestion that you ‘stick to your knitting’. In the case of Avoca Handweavers however, it’s undoubtedly a good thing that they didn’t stick to the manufacturing formula that had served the enterprise for over 250 years.
When you stand in the gardens at the Avoca outlet in Kilmacanogue, as I did recently, it’s the easiest thing in the world to imagine that the company arrived fully formed as a designer and retailer of thousands of products from around the world. Here too, success can seem inevitable.
When Simon Pratt recounts the story of Avoca, there is an easy grace in the telling that belies the many dilemmas that he and his entrepreneurial siblings faced as they traced the path from the company’s origins as a maker of rugs, throws and scarves to the international retailing business that it is today. But a brand as individual and confident as Avoca doesn’t arrive as a much-admired player in the highly competitive world of retail without some soul-searching on the way. Or without making some far-reaching decisions.
Brightest Of Green
Simon recalls one such watershed moment some twenty years ago, when Avoca opened a shop on the famed Ring Of Kerry to sell its produce. The lengthy tourist trail is broken up by a series of vantage points where the sightseer can stop to admire the view, take refreshment and buy souvenirs of their visit. As is the case in most tourist spots, the choice of what to buy from one shop to the next varies little. The Pratts determined that if they were to truly stand out from the crowd, they would have to do something more than a little different.
Around the same time, Simon and his sister Amanda had begun to play a greater role in the family business. Whilst they remained passionate about the hand-weaving craft that was the mainstay of the business then, they were also eager to make their mark in producing something that was more of a reflection of their own taste and of the changing tastes of the time.
The Best Charms Of Nature Improve
And so began a shift in thinking that would see Avoca move from being mostly a manufacturer of tweed material and clothing for the tourist and overseas markets to a retailer of goods ranging from clothes to food to books and almost everything in between and a wholesaler designing, making and supplying goods to independent retailers around the world.
Of course, it would be a little simplistic to suggest that this shift was made in one eureka moment. The Pratts had long included some local produce such as jams and preserves on the shelves alongside the tweed clothing in their outlets. And the move to create a new version of Irishness that we might market to ourselves had been anticipated elsewhere in the pioneering efforts of the original Kilkenny Design workshops, and carried on in the cooking of the Allen family at Ballymaloe, the pottery being cast in the Pearce studios in Shanagarry and in the cheeses of trail-blazing dairy-farmers up and down the country.
But it was still a shift that had to be made and one that was by no means inevitable. Remember that the technician inside the business had to be reassured that the new direction was not a betrayal of the manufacturing credentials on which the business had been founded and had to resist the urge to cry out: ‘That’s not how we do it around here.’ It probably helped that, in addition to their desire for something new, the young adventurers had great respect for the craft that underpinned the manufacturing side of the business (and which can still be seen today in the quality of production across the entire Avoca range).
Looks That We Love
However, it isn’t simply this ability to strike a balance between the old and the new that sets Avoca apart from the rest. Simon confirms that the team behind the business is remarkably single-minded when it comes to identifying who their customer is.
Moving beyond the shift from tourist to local, Avoca homes in on the independent woman who sees in the eclectic mix on offer something of how she likes to shape her own surroundings. In the flourish of what Simon describes as the ‘handwriting of Avoca, which has always looked to create something individual, quirky and inspiring’, the customer can reflect her own sense of style and be inspired.
Whilst this choice of customer might at first seem a little limiting, Simon is quickly able to reach out beyond this woman to the family who might accompany her on a weekend, the girlfriend she might meet for lunch during the week and the visitor from overseas who she might wish to impress with something local, personal and a little different.
To paraphrase legendary retailer Julius Rosenwald (he of Sears Roebuck fame), Avoca’s ability to ‘stand on both sides of the counter at once’ means that their handwriting can be quickly adopted by the customer to create her own signature style. It’s not surprising that Simon can trace back a great deal of the inspiration for how Avoca has organised itself in terms of inventory and layout to the home of his grandmother where a mix and match of antiques and bric-a-brac made for an inspiring place to both live and visit.
A Valley So Sweet
It’s this sense of place that sits at the heart of all that’s best about Avoca. When the team sets out to build or adapt in a new location, it’s much less about following a rigid formula and much more about exploring how they might make a new Avoca space. Whilst Simon acknowledges that the Kilmacanogue outlet is probably the one that best fits the Avoca ideal, it enjoys many natural features that can’t be easily reproduced elsewhere: the old Jameson family estate and gardens, the nearby Wicklow mountains and a sense of removal from traffic and the city.
So when they decided to build from scratch at Rathcoole, where the outlet is located only metres from one of the busiest stretches of road in the country, they decided to take advantage of the unpromising location to create something quite new. The handsome building turns its back to the main road to face the distant mountains and the customer is invited to enter through a walled inner garden instead. In an instant, the outlet manages to skip past the dourness of the typical roadside offer of the retail giants elsewhere and create the delight that its customers cherish. Inside, the store is arranged on a series of terraces, which in turn offers the surprise of a glass-enclosed chill-room where cheeses and cold-cuts can be sampled before purchase.
The Bright Waters Meet
So what might we learn from the success of Avoca, apart from its not being quite as inevitable as it appears? It strikes me that the team behind it has such a clear sense of both where they’ve come from and who their customer is that it makes much of the decision-making very simple indeed. Whilst Simon talked of some of the more traditional management tools that they use in their business, it appears that he and his colleagues rely more on their understanding of their customer and of making a place where she (and those she brings with her) will feel at home. Avoca, in every sense then, is a meeting of true minds.
To learn a little more about how Avoca weaves its particular brand of charm, visit www.Avoca.ie
About The Blend
A Meeting Of Minds is one of a series of articles in which Gerard takes a look at how to cook up a great brand, samples some of the ingredients you’ll need to make one of your own and weighs up the impact of branding on different parts of the business mix.
Gerard is Owner Manager of Islandbridge, a business that delivers brand direction, planning and communications across a wide range of sectors including hospitality and tourism. Recent clients include The Louis Fitzgerald Hotel, The Smile Conference, Temple Country Retreat & Spa, Action Recruitment, The Fitzwilliam Hotel and HotelsInOne.ie.
For more on putting your brand to work for your business, call Gerard on +353 1 495 3330 or visit www.islandbridge.com
