Product Selection Dragon’s Den-style

Speciality Bites with

Paul Hargreaves

Chief executive of Cotswold Fayre

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• Can/should bosses really be close friends with their staff?

To save ourselves the tiresome biannual challenge of what new products to include in our catalogue, this year we came up with a different way of doing things

Usually it’s endless rounds of meetings and tastings, taking me hours and hours; time that I simply don’t have at this busy time of year. Unless you’ve been to our offices you wouldn’t believe the vast volumes of samples that get sent to us. I guess it’s a sign of success that every new artisan food producer wants to be included within our portfolio, but it can get overwhelming at times – particularly for my PA, Louise.

So, this year, in an effort to make the whole thing a bit more punchy, we sent out invitations to around 18 to 20 potential new suppliers asking them to visit the Cotswold Fayre’s Dragon’s Den. The only difference being that we weren’t parting with any money – the visitors were trying to part with their products.

First of all we had to have a two-hour meeting to try and decide which products from our existing range we should drop to make room for the new ones – not easy, and the jury is still out on some of these decisions. But we simply haven’t got the room in our warehouses to continue expanding the range ad infinitum.

Any new products must replace something we already list, as we wouldn’t be doing our customers – the retailers – any favours at all if we continued with poor-performing products. We want them to have successful products, which is better for their businesses and ours.

So, onto the dragon’s den. Everyone was given a half-hour time slot to come and present their products and to be in the firing line of our panel’s questions. The panel was made up of our most experienced sales account manager, who, over the years, has seen the products that work or don’t work for himself. Our sales manager, who used to run a deli himself, my PA Louise, who assembles the catalogue, and myself.

Apart from one supplier turning up 24 hours early, it all went very smoothly. Lots of tastings took place and lots of questions were asked. Some suppliers were given a hard time when they hadn’t thought about margins or marketing budgets, and for a couple who clearly made a good impression early on, it was more like ‘pussycat’s parlour’ than ‘dragon’s den’. We were all over them!

All in all, it was a creative solution to a perennial problem and – hopefully – everyone didn’t go home feeling like they’d been grilled alive. For those producers whose products we won’t list immediately, I will offer to help them develop their products and businesses to a place when we can. How about that for being a friendly dragon?!