Fentimans CEO – “Our fundamental desire is to reach everyone in the world with our soft drinks”
This year, Hexham-headquartered soft drinks company Fentimans turned 120 years old. Its chief executive believes its success is down to one thing: “Quality always survives.”
Ian Bray explained: “We produce our products using a botanical brewing process which means that the depth and strength of our flavours is so much better than anything else on the marketplace.”
That process, Bray told Insider, is a “little bit like making beer”. He continued: “You take ginger root and extract the flavour out of it then use it as a base to produce the soft drinks. Then we combine that with quality ingredients that have been fermented for a long time.”
The product is designed to be a “little indulgence” said the chief executive, who added: “The practical reality is whether you’re providing drinks to chaps coming out of the pits or the dockyards in 1907, or you’re providing drinks to consumers around the world today – quality is always what you’re after.”
Of course, in 120 years, there have been obstacles to overcome. “We’ve had to manage ourselves very carefully and keep an eye on the long term, because we’re not here for the next couple of months, we’re here forever,” said Bray.
“During Covid we had to pivot quite hard and really make sure we protected our cash flow until the country got back on its feet again. Similarly we faced some massive cost increases after that.
“All of these things have happened but when you’ve been around for a long time you realise that things come and go. You have to know you’re in it for the long haul.”
Speaking of long haul, the business has been based in the North East since its inception, and this is not set to change. “It would’ve been easy for us to move south but this is where we were born, this is where we grew up as a business so it feels like the right place for us to stay. We would never dream of leaving the North East.”
Culture is at the heart of Fentimans, as Bray explained: “This is the friendliest place I’ve ever worked. We’ve got a really nice bunch of people here and my experience is if you have a nice culture, a lot of other things are really easy to manage around.”
At the moment Fentimans is marketing in more than 60 countries, but there’s still a way to go. “Our fundamental desire is to reach everyone in the world with our soft drinks”.
Bray noted: “It’s a constant battle of convincing our customers that they need to display us and then having a conversation with our consumers so they want to try us.
“The third pillar of that is to make sure we always produce the best quality product we can possibly produce, and never compromise with that.”
One of the lovely things about the brand, the chief executive observes, is that “as soon as someone tries it, they’re extremely likely to come back again”.
“Doing things well, and doing them consistently, is what has helped us endure through that remarkably long period of time.”
Original article posted by InsiderMedia