What advice does one of Ireland’s top business women have for entrepreneurs? Go big, if you want to take the biscuit.
This week on The Capital B business podcast, the co-founder and marketing/innovation director of the East Coast Bakehouse and RTE’s newest Dragon’s Den panelist, Alison Cowzer, shared some great advice for budding entrepreneurs. And admitted that no, she doesn’t know how they put the figs in the fig rolls.
Here are Alison’s top three tips for anyone thinking of making their mark on the booming Irish food industry:
1) Accept help
Starting a business is tough anyway so we figured we might as well start a big company as start a little one. Having said that, we do try to keep it lean. We have a small team and do a lot ourselves – my brother did our radio advert and we get out and do all the sampling ourselves. We get a lot of help from organisations like like Bord Bia and Enterprise Ireland. They’ve really helped us on a global scale; they made us look into export and helped us to be more outward looking. As a nation, Ireland has to be outward looking because we are such a small economy.
2) Stand by your product and ethics
Irish people consume over 230 million euro’s worth of biscuits every year but most of those products are imported. Irish food has such a good reputation for quality and Irish consumers are now far more discerning, they are a lot more interested in the ethics of food and ethical food sourcing. We use real Irish ingredients, we strongly believe in sourcing Irish ingredients and we’re going to stand by that – even if it would be cheaper not to.
3) Know your stuff (inside out)
Creating a brand from scratch has to be based on a truth. We had to be happy that our product was better than what was already out there, that we had something more to offer. Before you meet with buyers make sure you have your numbers right. Know your market, know where there is a gap, know your categories and know your competitors. Then you can have that meeting with a buyer and get them to understand what you already know.
The Capital B is available free of charge every Monday morning from 7am; listeners can tune in on Soundcloud and can also download and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes and other podcast providers.
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