Elliot Moss
Welcome to the Jazz Shapers podcast from Mishcon de Reya. What you are about to hear was originally broadcast on Jazz FM however music has been cut or shortened due to rights issues.
Welcome to Jazz Shapers with me, Elliot Moss here on Jazz FM. It is where the Shapers of Business join the Shapers of Jazz, Soul and Blues. My guest today is Jim Cregan, Co-Founder of Jimmy’s Iced Coffee. After a trip to Australia and developing a taste for iced coffee, Jim was unhappy to find the UK didn’t sell his preferred brand. He and his sister, Suze decided to devise their own and launched in Selfridges in April 2011. Jimmy’s Iced Coffee is now a nationally recognised brand stocked in most of the major supermarkets across the country. They sell four iced coffee drinks as well as branded accessories and Jim created Rhy Club, a membership group for customers who as they describe, love to cruise the open road, ocean, dirt track by whatever means makes them happy. You’d better believe it. Jim, hello.
Jim Cregan
Hello, hello, hello. How are you?
Elliot Moss
I am good, how are you?
Jim Cregan
I am really good thank you. Really good.
Elliot Moss
What’s a man like you doing making coffee? When did this all happen? Tell me about it.
Jim Cregan
This happened just over seven years ago or maybe like nine years ago actually. I went to Oz and had the most amazing time hanging out there for five or six months with my Mrs. We just had to escape the UK because it was cold and boring and I ran and did the worst jobs in the entire history of the world and we just stumbled across their version of ready to drink iced coffee and we’d never had it before, fell in love with it, came back to the UK and saw that iced coffee existed in the supermarket but it was all really, really rubbish so I thought in true Dragon’s Den style – there was a gap in the marketplace – for this particular product and set about creating it so got in touch with my sister, she was running a coffee shop at the time so we used that as like a lab to create iced coffee. We found someone to make the product for us, we stole loads of money from mum and dad and we’ve paid them off now which is great and here we are seven years down the line with iced coffee all over the UK and in a couple of countries and a really solid team and operating out of a really big, fat warehouse in Christchurch in sunny Dorset – cue the claps in the background.
Elliot Moss
It’s a pretty good story. Roughly, you are talking quite a few million pounds worth of sale as well?
Jim Cregan
Yeah so this year we will probably do about between five and six million quid.
Elliot Moss
Which means that how many people work in the business today?
Jim Cregan
There will be… there’s going to be eighteen of us in the next two weeks.
Elliot Moss
I guess you kept it pretty tight actually?
Jim Cregan
Yeah.
Elliot Moss
It’s a big business to be only employing eighteen people? Obviously you’ve got lots of other people involved I imagine that are on kind of doing their bits that they need to do but they are not full-time in the middle of the place?
Jim Cregan
Yeah exactly. I think if we were producing our own stuff as well then we would probably end up having a… we’d probably have a hundred people because you’ve got these factories that are operated by lots and lots of different people but because we outsource the product for manufacturing then we don’t have to worry about that so we are essentially just a sales and marketing machine operating out of an office.
Elliot Moss
You, like many of us, have had these ideas and you’ve gone ‘that would be cool’ but most of us, I’ve said this before to people, I go, most of us just go ‘that’s a really cool idea’ and then you carry on with your life. You didn’t. Why? Why you? Why did you, why do you think you had the tenacity to actually follow through and create something and put it on the shelf?
Jim Cregan
Umm….
Elliot Moss
It’s not easy to do at all as you probably discovered?
Jim Cregan
No it’s almost impossible and when you look at the stats of start-ups how many actually start, how many actually start and then fail and how many actually start and then succeed is really, really small so I feel really lucky the fact that we have got to this situation but since I was a kid I really liked doing I guess, I don’t like the word ‘entrepreneurial stuff’, I did entrepreneurial things. I used to buy fake backpacks when I used to live in Dubai, surf bags and I would take them into school and say that my uncle brought the over from the States, so I used to make money doing that and then got beaten up because they found out they were fake. And then I ran an illegal beer delivery company down in Bournemouth onto the beach which was cool until we got into trouble and then the iced coffee thing I think it was a case of the fact that because I didn’t have a nice job at the time, I didn’t have BUPA and a two up – two down house and job security and all that, I was just in this really horrible position of being a labourer in the winter moving bricks around for £50 a day which is not fun and then in the summer time it was really fun, a great job working festivals and dressing up in all these kind of really random outfits and getting people introduced on stage and all these kind of things but it wasn’t just very sustainable dressing up in weird outfits and spending quite a lot of time just drinking beer and you kind of think, okay that’s fun for a short period of time but not a massive amount of time. So that was a kind of switch for me to go right I’ve got this idea and I need to pursue it to make it epic.
Elliot Moss
As you said, the chances, you know, the odds are really stacked against you. Is there anything that you look back on and go ‘if I hadn’t have done that thing’ we would not be having that conversation, this conversation? Or is it really the cumulative effect of just a lot of correct decisions?
Jim Cregan
Everything that you’ve done is everything that you’ve done. Some of the things we have done are definitely wrong and some of the things we have done are definitely right and you kind of… I don’t necessarily regret some of the mistakes we have made because you just have to make mistakes in order to succeed I guess without sounding corny but yeah, there are definitely things if I look back and go there are certainly a few things I would change like.. just in decision making actually, really take time to consider decisions as opposed to going ‘yes that sounds great’ and then going down that path and it maybe not turning out to be something so exciting or something so rewarding whether it is going to be financially or emotional or something for the business or whatever. But all I can say, it’s just been mega. It’s kind of like having a kid, you know one day you want to strangle them but obviously not for legal purposes but then some days they are just the most amazing things in the entire history of the world and it is the same with business. One day you wake up and you are like oh no here we go and then next day you are just on such a high because it’s the best thing ever.
Elliot Moss
Now you talked earlier about and I touched on it and I want to talk about it a bit more this point of I tried this and I did this at school, I got in trouble, I pretended the bags were from there and then I did the other thing which turned out to be illegal beer, the beer delivery business and all that. That idea factory that is your head, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer and all that other stuff, where do they come from these ideas and do you think about whether it is going to be legal or not and I know that sounds a strange question…
Jim Cregan
Yeah.
Elliot Moss
…is it just a fountain that you can tap into?
Jim Cregan
I think so yeah. I think I’ve got one of those lucky weird brains that you see something and you think ‘oh that could be quite fun’ and you never really think of the financial side of it, you actually think of the journey that it will take you on and the journey for example of buying these fake surf backpacks was ‘this is going to be great’ because I am just going to borrow like a hundred Dirham at the time from my mum and dad and buy five bags and take them on the bus and knowing how excited I will be on the school bus to be able to take them to my first class and before the teacher comes in, lay them out on the table and say ‘who wants one of these bags?’ and then suddenly everyone bought them all and then you go back to the shop and say ‘I need to order more’ and that kind of journey is the most exciting bit and I don’t know where it comes from, I guess I have kind of been permanently hungry about these kind of little things and luckily for me the iced coffee thing is one of the ideas that we have done that has kind of come into fruition and done well.
Elliot Moss
What about travel because obviously I noted that you have lived abroad, you touched on it, you were born in Dubai, your mum is from Spain, I mean you have travelled to… you’ve been in Australia. There is a kind of sense that I think you seem very curious to me and that you are very open to the world but has that inspired you? That moving around the world and seeing different things?
Jim Cregan
I think that’s fundamentally one of the most amazing things about how we’ve come to do what we do so all the decision making that we do, our kind of outlook in terms of business and building relationships and stuff has spawned from our kind of ex-pat being. Growing up in somewhere like Dubai, on our school bus for example you are hanging out with every single race, nationality, gender, religion, everything and it was just amazing and that kind of thing just broadens your mind and you end up just becoming a lot more open and a lot more easy and a lot more relaxed about I think, life in general and that’s what I want to try and do for our kids is either kind of home school them and take them away in our big camper for a year or two just so that they can have the same similar experiences that I did because I don’t want them just to be locked into one community for their entire life, it would be quite nice to go and explore other parts of the world because it’s mega.
Elliot Moss
I should have said your dad was in the Army when he met your mum in Spain rather than she was Spanish of course.
Jim Cregan
That’s correct.
Elliot Moss
I corrected myself.
Jim Cregan
That’s all good.
Elliot Moss
Stay with me for much more from my guest, Jim Cregan, he is coming back in a couple of minutes but first we are going to hear some advice for your business from our programme partners at Mishcon de Reya.
There are loads of ways for you to dip into the rich pool of former Jazz Shapers and indeed to hear this programme again with Jim, my new friend Jim sitting here. You can ask Alexa to play Jazz Shapers and there you can hear many of the recent programmes or if you pop Jazz Shapers into iTunes or your podcast platform you can enjoy the full archive but back here, right now I have got Jim in front of me as I said and by the way he is looking very fine, he is wearing shorts. Forget the weather, Jim wears shorts and he also wears… he’s got a cap on and sporting a fabulous beard which if you go on to YouTube and put in Jimmy’s Iced Coffee and I think you said Keep Your Chin Up…
Jim Cregan
That’s our strap line yeah.
Elliot Moss
…which is your strap line you will find a ridiculous thing, I have met many people and many people who are entrepreneurs, who are Founders, none of them I think have had a film that has been viewed a million times plus on YouTube. Tell me about just where that comes from, we touched on the fact you’ve got crazy ideas all the time, what made you think that a brand could get away with creating a film that people might want to watch because plenty of people try but no one actually sorts of lands it. Did you write it? Did you do this rap as well?
Jim Cregan
No we… the idea spawned form a kind of spoof video of a Snoop Dog track that we did in Dubai. We filmed it and it’s just hilarious. It’s in the depths of YouTube somewhere - I am not going to say any more - but then I thought with Jimmy’s I really enjoy old school hip hop and I thought why don’t we tell our story about our iced coffee company through the medium of rap – sounds terrible – but I spoke to one of my best buddies Ben and he runs a company called Fearlessly Frank over in East and they are like an innovations company and I said to him ‘I want to do this rap video’ and he said ‘man we can help, we’ve got the guys who can help write it’, a friend of mine called Russ Chimes did all the music for it and it kind of came together and they did all the production, we found an amazing production team, it came together and they helped seed the video out there on to YouTube so people could view it and it turned out to be one of the funniest things that I had done in the company. If somebody says what is the best or most memorable awesome moment, it would be kind of setting up that whole thing because we had like twenty two people in our office, bearing in mind there was only four people working for us at the time. So having this influx of people all preparing to create this epic rap track and then we did it in two days straight, like stupid hours and then it came on line and we actually got it played on Channel 4 late at night all these other bits and pieces and it just turned into one of these like semi kind of viral things and yeah it was great.
Elliot Moss
Now these ideas, I mean on the serious side of it obviously it is incredibly smart that a brand, a small brand, a coffee brand goes and does something which gets a bit of cash air and a bit of coverage because you can’t buy that sort of publicity, you could never have afforded to do it and I know you’ve done advertising campaigns, you’ve gone round different places in a big truck – those ideas continue. I’ve read somewhere that Suze says she’s the engine in the room that puts the fires out which are your ideas in a good way.
Jim Cregan
Yeah.
Elliot Moss
How do you evaluate whether those ideas are actually going to work or do many of them not work? And we are only talking about the ones that have?
Jim Cregan
So the majority of the ideas that we do, they just happen because it is something that I want to do. I think because my name is on the carton it’s kind of, the personality is reflected through the name so stuff that I want to do is channelled through our iced coffee product and it kind of fits our marketing strategy. But now because we are a much bigger team and a much more kind of experienced team, if I have an idea typically the marketing guys will be, they might go and research and go ‘do you know what that’s actually a really bad idea’ and they will explain the reasons why and then you kind of go ‘okay that makes sense’. But before we used to just shoot from the hip and just come up with, come up with just really random ideas and stupid stuff to do and most of the time it would work out okay, sometimes you will fail at something but that doesn’t necessarily matter but now it is a little bit more calculated.
Elliot Moss
But is that as much fun because you’ve got a twinkle in your eye Jim and that whole twinkle has taken you to where you are so when you’ve suddenly got three or four clever people saying ‘no, no, no, here are eighty four reasons why’ you must go ‘really?’. Do you sometimes just go ‘I hear you but we are going to do it anyway’.
Jim Cregan
In some cases definitely yes and in some cases definitely no and its actually, it’s really handy because these guys exist because they are really, really good at what they do and some marketing stuff that we do for example, we will just do it and when someone says why are you doing it, we say ‘oh we are just doing it because it’s fun’ but now when you’ve actually got really decent budgets, like Steph our marketing manager is amazing and I will say, ‘why are we doing like an above the line bill board campaign in Leeds’ and she’ll go ‘well Jim the Tesco Express in Leeds is actually our bestselling store in the whole of the UK and there’s a big student market there and those are one of our fundamental audiences’ and then suddenly you are like ‘oh right this is quite serious’ and stuff but then you can make the creative of what you are doing on the bill board really, really hilarious so it’s all, it’s all…
Elliot Moss
Is it where strategy meets creativity?
Jim Cregan
Oh God.
Elliot Moss
Stay with me for more from Jim, my maverick I think and still twinkly eyed Business Shaper today, Jim Cregan; Co-Founder of Jimmy’s Iced Coffee. Time for some more music, it’s another classic, Stevie Wonder with Golden Lady.
That was Stevie Wonder with Golden Lady. I am with Jim Cregan, he is my Business Shaper and we have been talking about all sorts of stuff. I want to talk about your sister for a bit and that partnership that you have because in most great businesses, businesses that grow and yours has grown exponentially over the last few years and will continue to grow I am sure. There is usually a fantastic alchemy between the one or two or three people at the top of it. Yours is your sister?
Jim Cregan
Yeah.
Elliot Moss
It’s different. I have a great relationship with my sister but she is my sister and we can work together but you are working together.
Jim Cregan
Yep.
Elliot Moss
What’s it like Jim, bearing in mind she might be listening? So just…
Jim Cregan
That’s true.
Elliot Moss
Unlikely though.
Jim Cregan
Suze if you are listening… no. It’s was hilarious, when we first set up the company the accountant that we were setting it up with sat on the opposite side of the table and he said ‘I just want to make you aware that this isn’t going to work’. I said ‘what do you mean it isn’t going to work?’ He is like, ‘siblings I’ve seen it before and they always… these sibling businesses always fail’ and we just said ‘dude we have been through way worse than running a company so we will just crack on and everything will be fine’ and it has been epic and I kind of… at the beginning you kind of, you push each other’s buttons like when you were younger, like playing ‘it’ and just annoying each other and you know exactly which buttons to press to make them annoyed and we do that a lot and I don’t know why. I guess it is just because of that sibling rivalry.
Elliot Moss
You are not alone Jim. Anyone that’s got a brother or sister will go, you go back to see your parents or your family do’s and it is always the same, you revert back to when you were eleven and thirteen or whatever it was.
Jim Cregan
Yeah.
Elliot Moss
Always.
Jim Cregan
And that’s how we kind of started at the beginning but then we very quickly realised that we had one common goal and that is to make awesome ready to drink iced coffee that we would want to put in awesome fridges across the UK and beyond so we had to just focus on that goal. You have your ups and your downs. The downs come from sheer exhaustion when it is just the two of you working for three or four years flat out and then you suddenly take on staff who can relieve you of work and actually do a better job than you’ve ever done and we are now at a point where we can go and have coffee together and we chill and we chat and we discuss much bigger business ideas and bits and pieces and really enjoy each other’s company because it can get so stressful and so hard but there are those moments where it’s just gold and you go ‘this is… these are the reasons why we are working together because we can actually really chew the fat and have fun and hang out and enjoy the fruits of our labour by just hanging out’ and it’s really cool.
Elliot Moss
And I imagine there is trust there beyond… a level of trust that will transcend almost any relationship apart from maybe your husband or your wife?
Jim Cregan
Totally. That’s like one of the most fundamental things and when we’ve hired people you… I tend to be like ‘oh your hired okay here you go, here’s 100% trust, you can whittle it down if you want until I don’t trust you anymore and then you will be fired’ but yeah with a sibling it’s 100% there and you don’t ever have to worry about it and that’s been, that’s been a really rewarding thing.
Elliot Moss
And you mention other tough things, you don’t have to go into any detail at all but is it around having perspective about what this business is in your life versus other stuff that may have happened in your life?
Jim Cregan
Yeah essentially. Yeah it’s… the growing up abroad was, it was amazing but it has its ups and downs and bits and pieces. I think we are pretty hardy and especially being an ex-pat you are, you get to see a lot of the world and a lot of different things and I think it kind of really helps shape you, who you are and business, yes despite it being hard, it is just another thing you throw into the mix to crack on with if that makes sense?
Elliot Moss
It makes perfect sense. Stay with me Jim, don’t go anywhere because we are going to have our final chat with you, plus play a track from Grant Green and Dianne Reeves, that’s in just a moment.
That was Grant Green and Dianne Reeves with Down Here On The Ground, the Unmah remix, I hope I said that properly. I am with Jim Cregan who has been an absolute pleasure to have because he is full of ideas and a slight naughtiness as I said in his eye, a bit of a twinkle. You have had people back you Jim, and I mean Selfridges when you first decided you were going to go in there.
Jim Cregan
Yeah.
Elliot Moss
What would you say to people, we’ve talked earlier, you said it’s almost impossible, almost impossible to actually launch a business and be successful. What would you say to those people who along the way like Selfridges have taken a punt?
Jim Cregan
What in terms of them wanting to…
Elliot Moss
Be involved and actually go you know what, I like this, I am going to put it in Selfridges or I am going to help you, I am going to do this. Those people that along your journey have actually said ‘yeah I’ll back you on that’.
Jim Cregan
What do I want to say to those guys?
Elliot Moss
What do you want to say to those guys?
Jim Cregan
Oh God, I want to, I want to take them for a beer and give them a massive hug and say thank you so much for being such a dude, or dudette in this case. There was a lovely lady called Elizabeth at… I won’t give her surname away although she has married now so it has changed.
Elliot Moss
Or her address, maybe not that.
Jim Cregan
Err yeah and she was working at Selfridges and I kind of, I was so stupidly passionate back in the day and I still am but I remember just kind of bursting in there and being like ‘oh my God, I’ve just been to Australia and I found amazing iced coffee and I’ve come home and I’ve made my own and I don’t want to be a labourer anymore, and I don’t want to dress up as a mermaid and introduce all these bands and acts and I just want to sell you stuff, my stuff in your store because your food hall is incredible’ and she was just like ‘okay, yeah sounds great, like when do you want to launch?’ and I was like ‘well when do you want to launch?’ and she was like ‘we don’t really have much time, just tell me when you want to launch’ and then I am asking stupid questions like ‘where do I get a bar code from because I haven’t got a clue, is there like a bar code shop on Selfridges, on Oxford High Street’ and she was like ‘oh wow, you really are quite naive aren’t you?’ and I was like ‘yeah I am’ and eventually we got it listed and on 7 April 2011 we launched in there and it was such a mega day. To actually sell your own product with a bar code on it, I know it sounds a bit weird but when you sell your own product and you beep it through the till and it says Jimmy’s Iced Coffee you are just like pure elation.
Elliot Moss
What you have done now is you’ve got bar codes all-round the house haven’t you just saying Jimmy’s Iced Coffee. He’s in the bath, oh its Jimmy’s Iced Coffee, he goes to the toilet, Jimmy’s Iced Coffee. But that serious point about the practicalities, the bar code and there are probably fifty other things where if you don’t know, you just don’t know. That’s a hard journey as well isn’t it although once you’ve done it once I imagine you would pick up and say okay it was not that difficult now I know how to do it I will just do it again?
Jim Cregan
Yeah it’s really just asking questions and I’ve done a lot of mentoring for businesses, predominantly in the foods and drinks space and you say ‘your product is perfect for Selfridges you know, give them a call’ and you speak to them three months later and you are like ‘have you rung Selfridges?’ and they say ‘I don’t know their number’ and you are like ‘you cannot use that as an excuse’. You have to be able to pick up the phone. If you truly believe in what you are doing you will speak to anyone about how to make your business better or grown because you don’t have any shame or any worry or anything like that so it’s always trying to open doors and asking questions that they might think is a silly question but it is the most useful question to you at the time.
Elliot Moss
In terms of where you go now because this is now an established business and I imagine you are not going to want to flat line for long, you’ve got four variants I think.
Jim Cregan
Correct.
Elliot Moss
You’ve got this Rhy Club which is around kind of getting engaged with the brand, you’ve done these funny things with the films, you’ve got the trucks running around, all sorts of stuff. Is there a plan that says I want to be fifty million big, I want to sell this business, I want to go and create other variants? Are there things that you are in discussion about?
Jim Cregan
Yeah there is certainly a few things we want to do. Fundamentally we want to become plastic free by 2020 and at the moment the only plastic part of our product is the cap and we have just changed to a cane production method cap but eventually we want to go into a can because a can is the most widely recycled product you can get so we are going to have two new products launch in quarter one of next year and then export is a really big thing for us so we are actually going to Cincinnati next week to go and pitch to a supermarket chain called Kroger which is going to be really exciting and then we’ve also launched back in Dubai so I want to go back over there and re-ignite our kind of ex-pat thing and maybe go and do some talks at my old school and some media houses and bits and pieces. So those are the two kind of fundamental things and then I guess a little bit further down the line if we can partner or do a merge with someone who could help us really get Jimmy’s everywhere, to be a proper household name then that’s something we really are interested in looking at too.
Elliot Moss
It’s been a real pleasure talking to you.
Jim Cregan
And you.
Elliot Moss
I am sure you are going to do it and when you next come in and it is like global global and Jimmy’s everywhere and your beard is bigger than this room, we will stroke your beard with huge deference and it is a fabulous beard honestly.
Jim Cregan
Thank you.
Elliot Moss
You will see in the photos when you go on line and have a look at this. Thanks so much. Just before I let you go, what’s your song choice and why have you chosen it?
Jim Cregan
Oh my song choice is My Baby Just Cares For Me by Nina Simone. My mum, we used to have the record of it in Dubai and my mum used to play with my toes as though it was the piano so that was one of my big memories and then it was the first track I slow danced to with my wife and then we had it as our wedding track and it is just like my absolute favourite – I love it.
Elliot Moss
That was the song choice of my Business Shaper today, Jim Cregan. The Co-Founder of Jimmy’s Iced Coffee. Came up with the idea whilst he was travelling, went and made it happen in spite of the odds and was here to talk about it. Someone who is an absolute enthusiast, full of ideas, never stops but underlying all of that is a serious thinking guy who understands just where he wants to take his business. Really fantastic stuff. That’s it from Jazz Shapers have a lovely weekend.
We hope you enjoyed that edition of Jazz Shapers. You will find hundreds of more guests available to listen to in our archive. To find out more just search Jazz Shapers in iTunes or head over to mishcondereya.com/jazzshapers.