Secret Diary of a Mumprenkeur: Adventures in last minute-ism?

Meriel Kehoe - 19 Oct 18

When we first pitched our frozen yoghurt lolly brand to Sainsbury’s we made a bit of a school girl error.  We didn’t have anywhere to make them, at least nowhere that could make 64,000 in one hit. Up until that point, we’d been winging it, using a borrowed ice cream machine and ingredients we bought at the local shop. It was time to get serious and get ourselves a ‘proper’ factory.

We trawled the UK searching for somewhere to make our product thinking that if we dangled the carrot of a nice shiny contract with Sainsbury’s, we’d have people falling over themselves to help. It turns out, this isn’t how it works.

We’d already been to Sainsbury’s to tell them we needed to change our company name because of a legal issue, but now, with just eight weeks to go before we were due to hit the shelves, I had to ring them and say ‘er, sorry about this but, we can’t find a factory, can you help us with some suggestions please?’

They were amazing and gave us some names.  I plonked Fin in front of Bing for half a day, picked up the phone and crossed everything. The responses were tepid at best, ‘You’re too small’, they said or ‘too healthy’, ‘too Greek yoghurt-y” and just as I was about to give up, pour myself a giant gin with a tear mixer, the phone rang. “Yes we can help” said the lovely man. “All you need to do is jump on the plane to Holland and we can start the ball rolling.” For the sixty-billion-ty time since we’d started our business, we genuinely didn’t know whether to dance or cry.  So, with a cheesy tune on the radio and deadline-from-hell looming, we did both at the same time. Surely nothing else could go wrong could it?

Secret Diary of a Mumpreneur Part 1

Secret Diary of a Mumpreneur Part 2

www.claudiandfin.co.uk

Meriel Kehoe

I’m a mumpreneur and Mum to seven year old Finlay, trying (but not always succeeding) to do both those jobs well. I’m a ninja of the juggle, nailing loads of washing on conference calls and silencing my son by conjuring a well-timed snack whilst simultaneously bashing a keyboard. My brand has grown from the kitchen table to supermarket shelf and my boy has grown from 50cm to well over a metre. I can’t take all the credit for those two things but I can try and enjoy the ride even if I sometimes drop the ball. When I’m not out and about being mumpreneurial, I can mostly be found in my spare room in ‘activewear’. Very occasionally I am actually active in it too.

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