Sure, Jamie Laing might not have had the same starting point in life as most of us – being born into the McVitie’s biscuit fortune certainly does help grease the wheels – but there’s no denying that the media personality has found the key to success with Candy Kittens.
Laing first burst onto our screens in Made in Chelsea’s second season in 2011 and has maintained a high profile since then, initially as an influencer of sorts and then later as an entrepreneur with his Candy Kittens sweet business.
Combining these careers has catapulted likable Laing into the public consciousness.
He now hosts a variety of podcasts, including ‘Newly Weds’ with his celebrity wife Sophie Habboo, and has even been selected as Jordan North’s replacement on BBC Radio 1’s flagship ‘Going Home Show’.
Set up in 2012 with partner Ed Williams, the Candy Kittens brand has faced myriad trials and tribulations to be where it is today – that is; prominently placed in every sweet aisle of every supermarket up and down the country.
Boasting a turnover of £8 million in 2022, the confectionery brand has now shed its gimmicky reliance on Laing’s celebrity profile to establish itself in its own right.
Speaking at the IAB UK’s ‘Engage’ show recently alongside his wife, Laing spoke of the numerous setbacks that Candy Kittens has faced over the last decade and just how much learning on the job on he and Williams had to go through.
Turning down Primark
This journey included making a series of tough decisions – even rejecting a big-money deal to be stocked in Primark as the duo didn’t feel that this would align with their brand’s identity.
“I think it’s really important to think about the long game. Primark came to us at the very beginning and offered us a lot of money to be stocked in stores,” Laing reveals.
“We had no money and its would have been huge for our business, but we decided against it because it would have changed the vision of what the business was.
“It’s very easy to take the cash, but I was told a great thing, which is: business is paid in two currencies, cash and experience. Take the experience first and the cash will come later.”
Surprisingly, Laing goes to admit that he was unable to even draw a salary from the business the first ten years due to the cut-throat nature of the FMCG sector.
“We couldn’t afford it. We just couldn’t compete in FMCG, where the margins are really tough. It took us a long time to be seen as a longevity brand, because people just thought it was a fad. So we didn’t make money for a very long time.”
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“The turning point for us was getting into Waitrose for sure,” Laing continued.
“Because it gave us credibility and it gave us different customers that we could reach.”
The Candy Kittens values
What really helped Candy Kittens push on however, was making sure it stood apart from the pack.
Differentiation is of course one of the cornerstones of a successful marketing strategy. It is arguably more important to the ultimate success of a brand than something more incidental – such as relying on a reality TV star’s pull factor, for example.
The Candy Kittens brand stands out on the shelves in several ways – it is very clearly a premium product, both packaging and pricing attest to that, but the values it espouses also give it a distinct identity.
The sweet treat is famously vegan, and is now also B Corp certified.
“Being a B Corp is really important,” Laing said.
“As a B Corp we believe that people and profit have the same value. We know we’re leaving the world in a worse place and we’re relying on the government to make a change.
“I think it’s important for Candy Kittens to make a change, because we can then educate our consumers about that. We want to be as recyclable as possible, we remove gelatine from all our sweets and have attained this B Corp certification because we believe the future is vital.”
A challenger mindset
It is this challenger mindset that has enabled Candy Kittens to think a little differently to its competitors, which is essential when trying to shift the deep market domination that brands such as Haribo enjoy.
“I got told a very smart thing by Rory Sutherland, who’s an amazing guy, he said to me: “Never follow logic. If you’re flying a plane or parking a car, following logic is a good thing because it gets you back in a safe place.
“But if you’re setting up a brand or business never follow logic, because it gets you back to the same place as everybody else, the place where you don’t want to be.”
Laing continues: “So we went completely against what everyone else was doing, we made sweets which were colourful, sexy and fun, we made sweets with stood up rather than just folded over, which costs more, but we thought it was a point of difference.”
Ultimately, this is why Candy Kittens has found such rip-roaring success over the last decade – the decision to forge a bold, unique brand identity has very clearly set it out from the pack and made it an unqualified success.
But this is nothing new, as any good marketers know, differentiation sells.
