Webchat with innocent - 13th May, 2009

It's been ten years since a group of three friends sold their first smoothies from a stall at a small music festival in west London. Over that period, the business has grown to have a turnover of more than £100 million and their drinks are now sold in over 8,000 outlets across 13 different countries in Europe.

A Book about innocent:

This is a book about innocent, the smoothie company that we started in 1999. We began writing it about two years ago, as we thought it was about time we started documenting the history of our business. So we racked our brains and tried to remember all of the important stuff and sat down to write it. As can happen with these things, it took us a bit longer than we thought, but we finally finished it off just after Christmas. It tells the tale of the first ten years, and is a book for anyone who wants to start their own business, bring fresh thinking to their current one or has been told their idea won't work. innocent is a business that almost didn't happen (we were turned down by every bank and investor in the land), and we hope by telling our story we can encourage other people to have a go at doing their own thing.

Read more about innocent on our innocent page

Buy the book

Comments

[Jessica]

Question for Dan:

Hi Dan,

I was reading my Howies catalogue in bed last night and was surprised to come across a piece that you'd written for it. Although when I thought about it, it wasn't really that surprising as Innocent and Howies seem to share a common philosophy about doing business in an ethical, responsible way, whilst still having fun. So my question is, are there any other companies out there that you've noticed working in the same 'think global, act local' way? Do you think that Innocent has helped pave the way for new start ups to do things differently?

Cheers,

Jessica

[Rosie]

Hi Innocent - I thought I'd dive straight in there and ask how you feel the reaction has been to your announcement of the investment by Coca Cola - do you think it will affect your business at all?

Rosie, London

[Jennifer]

Was the innocent tone - the way you talk directly to people on your bottles, on your marketing - deliberate, or did it come naturally?

[Tom]

Hi - I just wanted to know if Innocent have a particular favourite smoothie?! My fave is strawberries and banana!

[Sam Sanchez]

Hello! Will you do any more public tastings at events? I think I've done these before and it's SO delicious.

[Francesca]

How did the idea for the style in which you write your labels come about?

[Jennifer Low]

How have you kept a rapidly expanding business feeling like a small company?

[Holly]

You've recently extended your range to include food, do you have any further plans for expansion? For example into the fruitbased snacks or ice-cream market - smoothie lollies would be great for the summer!

[CW]

Congratulations on the book!

What is the most useful piece of advice you would give to anyone who is starting up their own company?

[Claire]

Hi Innocent Team! Do you think that starting your own business is a good alternative for all of those grads who can't find jobs at the moment?

[dan at innocent]

Hello Jessica

I occasionally write little bits for howies. They're a good bunch of people who we've got to know over the years.

I think there are other companies out there doing things in a global/local way. And companies that are doing business in an ethical, responsible and often light hearted way.

One of my favourite examples is method, the American cleaning products company. Smart people who found a gap in the market and are filling it with great products using their own voice and principles. http://www.methodproducts.co.uk/

I think if you just take a walk around the shops you'll see a whole host of interesting new businesses doing good things, making good products. I think we've helped inspire other companies, just like we were inspired by great businesses that came before us (Apple, Ben and Jerry's, Body Shop, etc).

[dan at innocent]

Hello Rosie

Pretty balanced is my short answer.

There's been a lot written about the investment deal with Coke. For those who don't know about it, there's a whole load more stuff here http://www.innocentdrinks.co.uk/us/our_story/2009-investment/

For us it's a no-brainer. We want to get more innocent products into more people's hands/fridges. We needed investment to help us do this properly, and to help us really grow our business in mainland Europe in the coming years.

Coke were the only people we talked to who just wanted to let us get on with it, and they paid £30M for a 10-20% stake in the business.

So we get to continue to run the business in exactly the same way we always did, with no interference and with the ability to invest more back into developing new products and getting them out to more people in less time.

Of course, there were people who told us we made the wrong decision, but there are also people who told us it was the right one. We're always grateful that people have such passionate opinions about our company.

Ultimately, we looked at all of the facts and made the decision (and it took us a few months to make sure we'd examined every possible route). And we know it's the right one for the long term future of our business.

[dan at innocent]

Hello Jennifer

The tone comes naturally. It has its roots in the fact that we're a company founded by three friends (Rich, Adam and Jon). I went to university with them and started working at innocent a couple of months after launch and then started doing most of the writing, and I just carried on writing in the way that they started.

We always wanted to be approachable and open, and we still do. So the tone is nothing more than the way we all used to speak to each other. We're very fortunate that it seems to work well when talking to other people too.

[Matthew Pollard]

How did you go about creating the iconic Innocent brand? Do you believe that the brand has played a fundamental part to your success?

Thank-you

[dan at innocent]

Hello Tom

My personal all time favourite is cranberries and raspberries. But I've been drinking that for 10 years now, so I am quite fond of whatever's the most recent addition.

Our new banana-free recipe is hitting the spot at the moment. It's also very very green (kiwis, apples and limes).

I reckon if we were to do a poll at Fruit Towers, mangoes and passion fruit might come out top.

[dan at innocent]

Hello Sam

We will be giving away plenty of free samples this year, as ever. Could be at an event, a festival, in a supermarket or just on the street. Sometimes it's pretty unplanned, so you never know where we might pop up. But if you know of an event that would benefit from some smoothies, let us know (obviously, we can't do every single one, but we try).

[Tommo]

Hi Dan,

I've just read the book and I really enjoyed it. I work as a consultant helping firms to develop (or at least get closer) to the kind of culture you describe. You've pretty much defined nirvana as far as behaviours and employee engagement are concerned!

I just wondered how much you think the way people act and behave at innocent is down to the way their performance is measured and rewarded or, if it's influenced more by the prevailing norms and expectations of the group?

Cheers,

Tommo

[dan at innocent]

Hello Francesca

Thanks for your question. I talked about the specific style in which we write in my reply to Jennifer (3.01pm).

The reason why we actually write stuff on the label is that when we first designed them we found we had a bit of space left over. We didn't really know what to do with it so we started writing things, more to amuse ourselves than anything else. Then it seemed that people liked it, so we wrote some more, and some more...

[Charlie Hanville]

Hi Dan,

Thanks for giving up your time.

Ever thought about making any sorbets or ice cream?

[dan at innocent]

Hello Jennifer

Nice question - How have you kept a rapidly expanding business feeling like a small company?

I think a lot of it has to with paying attention to the small stuff - all of the little details on our packaging, on our website - if you pay attention to the small stuff, you're making a commitment to all of the good stuff that got us to where we are today. If we stopped doing all of that, we'd turn into some dull justlikeeveryoneelse business.

The other important thing is to hire excellent people. And to keep on hiring entrepreneurs. Rich, Jon and Adam started the business from nothing, but we have people at our place who are constantly making something out of nothing every day. Apart from London, we've got a few little offices across Europe, where people are introducing new countries and new people to innocent, and are having to behave extremely entrepreneurially.

As long as we are always looking for new opportunities and challenging ourselves to do stuff better, we'll stay small (whilst growing)

[Stevo]

Love the smoothies (except the cranberry and raspberry one), I swear by them over the winter months to keep colds at bay ...

Just a couple of recipe- based questions:

Why are there so many bananas in nearly all of the drinks?

Are there any plans to introduce Pears into the fruity mix?

Cheers,
Stevo

[dan at innocent]

Hello Holly

We're working on a few new things at the moment. Most are secret, but I do like the idea of smoothie ice lollies. It's something we've considered in the past.

Our Veg Pots are still relatively new and doing very well. And a couple of weeks ago we launched our Squeezies - squeezy fruit tubes for kids. We have high hopes for them as well.

http://www.innocentdrinks.co.uk/things_we_make/squeezies/

[Jennifer O]

Hi Dan,

I work in advertising and have seen recently in trade press that you're embarking on a pitch process to find a new partner ad agency.

Given that you've historically kept most/all of your creative in-house and obviously have a very good creative team, I'm interested in your thoughts as to what role you envisage the successful agency will have, and to what extent they will add to/alter the innocent brand as it stands?

(I really enjoyed reading A Book About Innocent by the way)

[Sarah]

Hello

I love your smoothies,and use the smoothie recipe book a lot. But I live in Switzerland, and currently can only get small bottles of a limited number of flavours. Do you have any plans to extend the range over here? Will we ever see the veg pots?

[dan at innocent]

Hello CW

Your question was "What is the most useful piece of advice you would give to anyone who is starting up their own company?"

It's very simple. It's the fact that you need to be very persistent.

Starting a business is tough. You will have moments where things aren't working, and it will take much longer than you anticipate. People will be quick to tell you why your idea won't work.

But true entrepreneurs don't give up until every angle has been covered, every opportunity taken.

Hearing 'yes', even when lots of people are saying no, can be quite useful.

(Obviously, before you start being persistent, you should check that your idea is a good one. Don't persist with an idea that you know in your heart is a bit rubbish.)