innocent
drinks is not Richard’s first
enterprise.In fact, Richard’s entrepreneurial career started earlier
than most, when he began washing windows for his neighbours at the age of eight.Following a brief spell of selling Smurf
stickers at junior school (until his teachers caught him), Richard retired from the coalface of
self-employment, aged 12.However, a
summer job picking up dog biscuits in a pet food factory soon reminded Richard of the joys of working for himself, and led
him to set up a summer gardening business called Two Men Went to Mow, employing
his school friends.
From
small acorns
After
graduating from CambridgeUniversity and working in
advertising for four years, Richard
and his two college friends Jon and Adam, decided to set up a lovely fresh fruit juice
company.After six months of developing
recipes in their kitchen, the boys wanted to test their drinks with a wider
audience.To do so, they bought £500 of
fruit, turned it into smoothies and sold them from a stall at a music
festival.They put up a sign that said,
‘Should we give up our jobs to make these smoothies’, and put out a big bin
that said NO and one that said YES.Fortunately, at the end of the weekend, the YES bin was full so they
went in the next day and resigned.
Nine years on
Nine years
into the business Adam, Jon and Richard
are closer friends than ever and innocent is the number one smoothie brand in
the UK
with a market share of 82%1. The
company now employs 270 people, and sells over two million little tasty drinks
in over 11,000 outlets each week.The
innocent range has expanded to include: special smoothies for children,
big one litre cartons for families at home, thickies for a yoghurt and fruit
blend as well as orange juice. September 2008 saw the launch of Veg pots, a
range of quick and tasty meals. The drinks and business regularly win industry
awards, including Best Soft Drink in the UK 2006 (for the fifth year running), Growth
Strategy and Business Innovation of the Year at the National Business Awards
and Growth Strategy at the European Business Awards.
As a business we want to make it
easy for people to do themselves some good. And we want to leave the planet a
little bit better than we found it. This is reflected in everything from our
use of green electricity at FruitTowers, to sourcing fruit
from places that go the extra mile in terms of looking after the people that
work on the farms, and the environment. All our bananas come from Rainforest
Alliance accredited farms. Every year we donate 10% of our profits to the innocent
foundation, which funds NGOs in the countries where we source our fruits.
