16 entrepreneurs – profile Baby boom – a success story
In 2004 Paul Lindley left his high-flying job and re-mortgaged his home to found children’s organic food brand Ella’s Kitchen, named after his daughter. This year, families will spend over £50 million on Ella’s Kitchen foods and the company, based near Henley, has a 12% share of the UK baby food market with its sights set firmly on becoming a global brand. No stranger to awards, Lindley is a finalist in the entrepreneur of the year category at this year’s National Business Awards, held in November. So where did it all go right, and what fires up this entrepreneur? Eleanor Harris met Lindley to find out
Paul Lindley (pictured) is founder and chief executive of Ella’s Kitchen. He was born in Sheffield and grew up in Zambia. After graduating from the University of Bristol, he trained and qualified as a chartered accountant at KPMG and then worked as financial controller, rising to deputy managing director, at Nickelodeon. In 2006 he launched Ella’s Kitchen, which now has an annual turnover of £30m and was ranked in the top 15 fastest-growing private companies in the Sunday Times Fast Track 100 in both 2009 and 2010. Lindley and Ella’s Kitchen have won 31 awards in five years, including the BlackBerry customer focus award for small business at the 2010 National Business Awards and the Ernst & Young entrepreneur of the year award for the London and South region 2011. Lindley is a co-founder of The Consumer Forum, a partnership of entrepreneurial UK companies which promotes customer excellence in business. Married with two children, Ella, 11, and Paddy, 8, he lives in Reading.
together health, convenience and fun? I had the idea of the brand before the products – most people who start businesses do it the other way round. An epiphany moment came when we were on holiday camping and we couldn’t find healthy, convenient and fun food for our kids, so I thought “this is my opportunity to put my money where my mouth is and really go on this adventure.” And I was looking for a new challenge. I gave up my job and gave myself two years to get this brand up and running, with the sole purpose of making a difference to kids’ health. Our vision hasn’t changed from that point: it is to be the world’s first global brand of premium food for pre- schoolers, a big, hairy goal from the very beginning.
How did you go about establishing the business?
Why did you set up Ella’s Kitchen?
I’ve always wanted to do something like this. I was a chartered accountant by training, but I knew it wasn’t a long-term career for me, and I then worked at Nickelodeon, the children’s television brand, for 10 years, starting out as a finance person and ending up by running Nickelodeon in the UK. Over the 10 years I was there I became passionate about children and children’s health, and we managed to create a brand which children thought was made by children and parents felt was a safe place, and that’s the heart of what became Ella’s Kitchen. At the same time I was having my own family and had fun and games trying to get our kids to eat. So what Ella’s became, the idea in my head, was could I create a brand that brought
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In those two years I worked out what the brand was, I found some packaging – we introduced a brand new kind of pouch packaging, other people do that now – and started to develop products, sitting round the kitchen table with my kids, mixing fruit and vegetables together in a way which wasn’t done before, and I didn’t approach the corner shops, farmers markets or delicatessens, I went straight to the supermarkets and Sainsbury’s eventually said yes. I re-mortgaged our house, releasing £200,000, to fund it initially and we had to do a very innovative financial arrangement, outsourcing manufacturing to a trusted expert. Innovatively with marketing, I went back to the children’s television channels and proposed that if they gave advertising to me, I would give them a share of my revenue. And one of them agreed, so I got
national television advertising. And then it really took off with consumers.
Can you tell me about the success of Ella’s Kitchen? How do you stand out from the crowd in that market?
We’ve gone from two products at launch to 51, from one supermarket to all the supermarkets in the UK and the major supermarkets in seven other countries, we have a subsidiary in the US which is growing very fast – about $11million of our £30m of turnover last year was from the US – and in Scandinavia we’ve got a big market. We’ve gone from families spending nothing to spending over £50m a year on our brand and they really trust it. To get trust is the Holy Grail for brands. I was going against some big boys – Nestle, Heinz, Cow & Gate
and others, so to get that trust so quickly surprised and delighted me. It’s because we really thought about our brand from the very beginning and understand what consumers want, how families live their lives and the pressures and challenges of their lives. We stand apart from all of our competitors still – it’s about our brand and about really engaging children with it – the bright colours and the fun recipes. Anita Roddick once said: “If you think you’re too
THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – THAMES VALLEY – NOVEMBER 2011
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