James Averdieck founded G Chocolate Puds with the aim of

creating high quality

desserts and puddings. His
products are now
sold in over 3000 supermarkets in
the UK
and many other retailers. James
spotted a gap in the market: there
was
a lack of high quality desserts
being
sold that could be eaten at home.
James

had always wanted to be an

entrepreneur and other members
of his family (his
brothers, father and
grandfather) had already set up their own businesses. His
father drummed it into him that the key to a successful
business was having the right product.
James noticed that many of the desserts that he found when he
was on holiday in France and Belgium were not available in the
UK. There were no brands selling high quality desserts in the UK
and James thought that he could be successful because he had
experience with a top supermarket and dessert brand.
James understood that his strengths were in marketing, so he
realised that he needed to hire someone who would be good at
the food/manufacturing side of the business.
He launched the brand in
2003 and they have now
have sales of over
10million per year. But,
despite this success, James
is always trying to improve
the brand, remaining
creative and innovative so
that he can make sure that
it is better than all its rivals.

Innocent is one of the UKs fastest growing brands, so it is

surprising that the founders of Innocent had no real experience

in the market before they

created their product.
Three friends, Richard
Reed, Adam Balon
and Jon Wright met at
university and worked
on many mini-business
ventures together,
including setting up
club nights. After
leaving university, all three entered the world of work, working
for big businesses in the City of London, in jobs that they have
now admitted that they hated. They found themselves living a
very unhealthy lifestyle snacking on chocolate and crisps in
the morning and they came up with the idea of a healthy drink
that people could have on the go.
They sold these drinks for the first time at a festival, making
the extremely risky move of leaving their fate in the hands of
the festival-goers. They asked their customers to taste the
drink and then put their empty bottle in a bin marked yes or
no to cast their vote as to whether the guys should quit their
jobs and take the smoothie business forward. Customers voted
yes and so the lads quit their jobs.
However, with just one months pay in their pockets, it was nine
months before the business was up and running. The 3
entrepreneurs were eating cereal three times a day. But they
were determined and one final, desperate, email found an
investor for the brand.
Their willpower and enthusiasm has made the business the
success it is today they are fresh thinkers, and their hard work
has led to Innocent selling more than 2 million smoothies per
week.
Their creative thinking has also led to the development of a
range of products, including natural veg pots.

PizzaExpress was founded by Peter

Boizot in 1965. Peter returned home
from a year working and travelling in
Italy, but he couldnt find a single
slice of pizza in England when he got
back. He was soon to change all
that
Peter first fell in love with pizza when, as
a
vegetarian, he discovered an alternative to
vegetable stew whilst on a foreign exchange visit to Italy in
1948. His love of the product led to his frustration when he was
not able to buy pizza in England, not even in Italian restaurants.
This combined with his desire to live life as an individual and
not wanting to work for something else, led him to open up his
own pizza restaurant.
Peter invested a large sum of his own money over 1000,
which was a lot in the 1960s, which was an extremely risky
move. Despite many frustrations and setbacks, Peter
persevered to create the vision he had for his own pizzeria.
He began to give away free pizza in order to help people
understand the product, showing initiative by dividing the pizza
into slices and giving it out through the open store front to
passers-by, however when he tried to charge for the pizza,
business slowed. However, Peter was determined to succeed
and refused to change his vision, opening his store before
lunchtime and not closing till 4am so that he could get some
business from late night drinkers.
However, Peter was flexible enough to realise something
needed to change, so whilst still selling just pizza, he decided to
make his restaurant more than a cheap pizza restaurant and
the PizzaExpress we are used to today was born.

PizzaExpress has now expanded all over the UK, mostly due to
Peters vision, ambition and initiative. When asked, Peter said
he never doubted his plan to bring pizza to the UK.

Peter Kindersley and

Christopher Dorling aimed
to create colourful reference
books into the usually dull
textbook market.
Trained as a painter, Peter
left home at 22 to find his
fortune in London. He made it big as an Art Director for a major
publisher by the time he was 28, but he could not get along
with how his bosses did business he decided instead to set up
his own business.
During his time as an Art Director, Peter met Christopher, who
was a talented editor and also very good with numbers which
went well with Peters imagination to create a brilliant business
partnership.
The pair decided they wanted to create brightly illustrated
reference books something they cleverly realised would
translate easily into many different languages, opening up
many market segments to them.
Peter and Christopher had a real passion for what they did
creating quality was the most important thing to them, Peter
explained I just loved building and making books. Peter also
had access to many contacts from his previous job, making it
easier to make DK successful.

Their innovative approach to publishing interested many

potential investors, but only after refusing to give up and
travelling to the US with the little money they had (a very risky
strategy) did they finally sell their original ideas. Peter
describes this as the little bit of luck every entrepreneur
needs.
Despite many setbacks, including a fire in their printing works,
meaning that all their work was lost and they had to start from
fresh, exceedingly close to the deadline, Peter and Christopher
never gave up. This attitude ensured that the business was the
success that it is today.

Dyson is now a multinational company, which has achieved

sales of over 3bn worldwide. But to achieve this, James Dyson
has gone through 20 years debt and faced multiple lawsuits.
James Dyson was an engineer and designer. Whilst studying, he
realised his dream was to be an inventor and during his time at
his first job (where he quickly became a Director of the
company), James realised how important it was to have a
finished product before trying to sell the idea this experience
would change how he did business in the future.
Inspired to change how technology worked, James chose to
leave his highly paid job and took out large loans to fund the
start-up of his own business. This business was based on the
design of a new wheelbarrow, but James was eventually bought
out of this business, meaning he lost the design rights for his
product too, a mistake he vowed never to make again.

James came up with the idea for a cyclone vacuum cleaner

when he noticed that his traditional vacuum would clog up very
quickly. He adapted the cyclone technology from an industrial
cleaner design and created a prototype from masking tape and
cereal boxes.
The new design wasnt immediately taken on by vacuum
manufacturers and although he was in a lot of debt, James
refused to sell his design for a one-off payment. He believed in
his design and wasnt willing to give up on.
Despite many legal battles over patents, near bankruptcy and
manufacturers putting up prices and halting production, Dyson
grew his business to the brand we know today, with
determination and complete confidence in his designs.

Extreme is a group of businesses based around extreme sports,

such as skateboarding, snowboarding
and surfing and it currently has
revenue of over 30million, in
more than 70 countries.
Al Gosling, the entrepreneur behind
the brand, says that he was never
really into school, leaving with 2
A-Levels. This prompted him to
move into business as an entrepreneur. When he was 21, he
moved to the Bahamas to live an outdoors lifestyle and 'study
he learnt to pilot a yacht and dive skills which he was
determined to turn into a business idea when he returned home
to the UK.
His passion for extreme sports drove him to set up 2 businesses
one to be an athlete management business and the other a
TV distribution company that would help producers of shows
featuring extreme sports.

Al spent the first few years in business working 12 hour days

and spending time and money trying to find programmes he
could distribute. However, his commitment paid off over the
years and the TV distribution business became a success. After
having little success with the athlete management business, 4
years after its start, AL decided to close it down.
Despite many setbacks and TV companies trying to not pay for
the programmes they used, Al focussed on overcoming these
issues one at a time, saying that he knew his business was
strong enough to survive. Following the success of this
business, Al decided to make the risky move into creating his
own TV channel which he would sell to cable TV providers.
The Extreme Sports Channel launched on Sky in 2000, with
over 10 countries signing up for the channel by the end of its
first year. The brand has continued to grow, now including a
range of hotels and a clothing range. Al has stuck to his motto
that if an idea has more pros than cons, it is an idea worth
following.