8 minute read
Growing a Baby Food Unicorn in China
Little Freddie founder, Piers Buck (CO 1987-91), divulges how his passion for food inspired him to take the leap from investment banking to baby food, growing his brand to unicorn status, and his thoughts on doing business in China. Interviewed by Joe Budge (C2 2003-08), Little Freddie’s Head of UK Marketing.
To bring us up-to-speed, can you give us a whistle-stop tour of your career to date? After leaving Marlborough, I studied Management and French, the highlight of which was a rather well-fed third year spent in the south of France. Who wouldn’t trade warm beer in wet Manchester for warm Pissaladière in sunny Antibes? From there, a decade in investment banking, initially with Citigroup in London and eventually with Macquarie in Melbourne and Hong Kong. Amazing training and exposure, but deep down not quite me. My love of food, first kindled growing up in Paris, was something never far from my mind. Fast forward to 2014 when my wife and I founded Little Freddie (named after our second child). The brand is centred around sourcing exceptional ingredients to create the best-tasting and most nutritious organic baby food. I personally visit all our farms, a quest which has taken me from the Canadian tundra (we are the only brand to use wild blueberries) to the Madagascan highlands (for Cayenne Lisse pineapples) to the Sri Lankan east coast (renowned for the creamiest coconuts), with tens of stops in-between, visiting farms and learning about produce. Without a doubt, this is one of the favourite parts of my job.
Our uncompromising focus on quality has been well received by the most demanding consumer of all, the Chinese parent, with Little Freddie now the No.1 premium baby food brand in China.
From your experience you will have a unique perspective of doing business in China. How is it different and what’s it been like during the pandemic? China is an amazing place – much maligned I would argue, full of challenges but also opportunities. One glaring difference relates to the structure of the market: whereas the big four retailers account for 80% of grocery trade in the UK, in China this number is just 8%. Practically speaking, if your ambition is to cover all of China, you’ll need teams in all the regions, to understand local preferences and customs that are marked. Hiring teams is easy, managing them is another story. Nowhere does the old adage ‘when the cat’s away, the mice will play’ feel more appropriate than in China, especially with geographically scattered sales teams. Constant supervision is a must, otherwise you might just find your salesperson representing both your brand and the competitor simultaneously (and you will never know about it).
I am so impressed with how our team navigated the pandemic in China. We were the first company permitted to reopen in the main business district of Shenzhen in mid-March 2020 when conditions were so fluid, and the local government was in no mood for risk taking. We were able to demonstrate that we would observe the highest safety protocols and agreed to strict penalties for non-compliance. Some judicious sharing of face masks (at a time they were as rare as hen’s teeth) certainly helped. But as is often the way, these stories of success come with personal sacrifice. Due to China’s quarantine requirement, my wife has had to base herself in Shenzhen, returning every four months to see the children, something she finds very hard given they are growing up so fast. By the time you read this, she will have done five 14-day quarantines in government-run hotels, which only get harder each time she tells me.
Going back to your time at Marlborough, what are your fondest memories? Before and during my time at Marlborough I had a relatively nomadic childhood, living in Italy, France, Germany, Spain and England. In some ways, my time at Marlborough was the first time I stayed put for longer than a few years, which was good for me. I think anyone who was there at the time might recall Marlborough to have been a fairly liberal institution, which required you to quickly learn to stand on your own two feet and develop resilience; traits that have served me well, especially with Little Freddie.
Little Freddie at a Chinese baby expo in Shanghai in 2018
Piers inspecting Shropshire quinoa
You’ve talked about your love for food, so how did you end up in banking? What advice would you give to people looking to change career paths? The lure of starting out in a highly regarded and well paid industry sucked me in without much careful consideration, if I’m perfectly
Piers with his children, Freddie and Amelia
honest. I enjoyed the work enough to get by but struggled with the fact you never really build anything in banking. When it comes to advice on changing career paths, the reality with banking in particular is that the minute you consider a role outside of the sector, you are staring down the barrel of a hefty pay cut, which often traps people. However, if you can look past the first year and start to think big and think long, I’m convinced you stand a far better chance of being successful doing something you are passionate about. And that’s before all the ancillary benefits such as emotional wellbeing, sense of purpose, etc.
If the passion was always food, why baby food? The passion was food, but I also always wanted to start my own business, so the challenge was finding something which combined the two. The idea came to us when we had our second child, Freddie. After using products in the market, we saw an opportunity to do something truly premium and modern, talking to parents as parents and not in baby speak.
How does your daughter Amelia feel about the business being named after her younger brother? Amelia is not the problem. Out of the blue Freddie came home from school recently asking for payment for the use of his name in our company. I agreed – that caught him out! I don’t expect this to be the last of it. Joking aside, I’m grateful to work with my wife and to actively involve the children, it will be an incredible memory for all of us in the years to come.
What do you think the secret behind Little Freddie’s success is? The best of East and West. I can’t do my wife’s job (running the commercial business in China) and she can’t do mine (managing our European supplier base). Bringing the highest-quality organic baby food from the other side of the world into the most regulated and, by some margin, demanding market is extremely challenging. You must have a local partner you can trust, and you need to be able to bring your European suppliers along for the journey, which is much harder than it sounds.
Our investment banking background has also proved useful, enabling us to secure funding from Carlyle, Hillhouse and Tencent, highly regarded investors with deep resources.
It can’t all have been plain sailing; are there any mistakes you look back on? Not trusting my gut instinct with hiring; launching too many products too quickly instead of focussing on hero products (our top five products account for over 40% of revenue); only hiring when the need was there rather than planning in advance; trying to design a brand to please everyone (don’t, you will end up with a brand with no personality). China is in the media often and not all the coverage is positive, what are your experiences of doing business in China and what would your advice be for anyone going into that market? Being married to a Chinese person has allowed me to see a different side of China, one often at odds with that portrayed in the press. There are many good things about China, it is not all bad. On a personal level, I find the Chinese people to be hospitable, generous, fun and considerate. On a professional level, they are eager to learn, hardworking, ambitious and willing to go the extra mile. Challenges include a tendency to focus on the short term, a constant desire to save cost at the expense of quality and a truly world-class ability to kill profitability by discounting the price (ruining your brand in the process). If you are considering entering China, think carefully where you are targeting. The eastern seaboard provinces are vastly different from the western landlocked provinces (spending power, sophistication, number of competitors etc). Target all of China and you may spread yourself too thinly. Focus on Shanghai and Beijing – together they equal the UK population!
What are the biggest challenges for Little Freddie now? Building a company for the long term. Finding the second wave of growth. Listing the company on the HK stock exchange in 2023. Retaining our #1 market position in the face of increasingly sophisticated domestic competitors. The list is long.
One final and alternative question… Marlborough College has a long connection with Mount Everest, you are one of a number of OMs to have summitted, how was it? I’m amazed at the College’s association with Everest, dating back to the famous 1953 conquest which was led by Lord Hunt (C2 1924-28), but what is even more amazing is that Jake Meyer (C3 1997-2002) summitted via the same route as me, just one day earlier. My summit in 2005 was special for many reasons, including the latest summit date recorded (5 June) and climbing the mountain from both the Nepalese and Tibetan sides in the same season (part of an unsuccessful traverse attempt), but the foodie in me would contend that bringing a whole leg of Jamon Iberico to Base Camp is worthy of an honourable mention. Once word got out, all sorts of treasures miraculously appeared from a seemingly barren environment – notably from the Swiss camp that had clearly been hoarding large amounts of Gruyère and Grison air-dried beef.
