ENTERPRISE WEEK

Everyone had a chance to attend events organised by the university as part of the enterprise week. Various events were held over the two week period where successful businessmen and other speakers came to discuss their lifetime experiences and whether they had been successful in starting up their own businesses. The two events which appealed to me the most were ‘Ella’s Kitchen’ and ‘If it all goes wrong, I will get a proper job’. As an Accounting and Finance student, my future ambition is to start my own business and build a successful firm, hence why I chose to attend the events mentioned above. The spokesmen were going to discuss the motivation behind starting up their own business and also offer advice on what to do and what not to do when setting up a firm. The event that will be outlined in this blog is ‘Ella’s Kitchen’, simply because it appealed to me more than ‘If it all goes wrong, I will get a proper job’.

Paul Lindley (Ella’s Dad), the founder of Ella’s Kitchen, discussed the company, all the sacrifices he had to make and gave us advice on starting up a business. Paul’s business is about making healthy and unique blend of foods for children. He got this idea of creating such products from his daughter, Ella, who disliked eating fruits and vegetables as they did not appeal to her. He believes that Ella and her generation should have the opportunity to eat better food and also to discover that eating healthy food can be fun, cool and tasty.

The target market for this business was children between the ages 6 months and 6 years and Paul’s focus was to approach things from a child’s point of view when creating their products; their packaging is colourful and fun, which attracts kids. In addition, they connect with kids via flavours, colours, textures and even names that will appeal to all of their senses. Paul set the company up as a sole trader. He invested £20,000 interested in getting all the samples done and conducting market research. He remortgaged his house once companies started demanding products. Ella’s kitchen has been trading for 5 years and achieved plenty of success. Below are few of the successes the company has achieved:

·         Food and Drink brand of the year

·         £30,000,000 Sales last year

·         10% of the baby food market in 5 years of trading

·         9^th fastest growing company

In addition, Ella’s Kitchen have expanded and now trade in 6 countries (UK, Ireland, USA and 3 Scandinavian countries); they retail 46 different baby food products. Paul brought success to Ella’s Kitchen in various ways. Firstly, he has had previous experience when it comes to working with children; he used to work for Nickelodeon before he started Ella’s Kitchen. Finally, his expertise in financial aspects in a business has benefited him largely to gain further knowledge on this sector of his business.

What benefited me was the advice he provided after he had spoken about his company. He went on to describe the steps and key things that needed to be considered when deciding to start up your own business. The key point he made was having the passion and drive in order to make the business work. Paul took the risk in order to earn the reward in the near future. Moreover, he used Greiners model of organisational lifecycle; looking at age and size. He described a graph on his presentation in relation to kids. This was beneficial as it showed he meant business and had conducted thorough research and not just rushed into making meaningless decisions in order to grow.

As mentioned in the introduction, my future ambition is to start my own business and build a successful firm.  After having listened to the presentation from Paul, in order to become successful owner of a business, there are various things needed to take into consideration; my aspirations for the future have not changed as I still want to achieve my future ambition. However, following the speech, I now have a better idea of how to go about starting a business and getting through a range of obstacles that may be present on my way to success.