HONEY, HONEY, HONEY
Sweet taste of success as Scott’s ‘sheer determination’ gets business buzzing with £11m turnover
AWELSH brickie who failed nearly all his GCSEs and was told by his business studies teacher he’d go nowhere is now running a honey business – turning over more than £11m a year.
Scott Davies set up Hilltop Honey aged 22 after being laid off as a brickie and has built it into the 26th fastestgrowing company in the whole of the UK.
Despite being a “nightmare” in school and ending up bagging coal for a living, Scott now has his honey products in nearly every supermarket in Britain.
It’s not a bad effort for someone who started out by selling jars of honey by knocking on his neighbours’ doors around his home village in Newtown because he “really liked honey”.
But it was a “complete fluke” which set Scott, now 32, on his way to making millions.
After a slipped disc in his back left him unable to work, a gift of a beehive from his parents proved to be the turning point in his life.
Pushed by his mum, Scott signed up to several half-day courses in accounting, marketing and business and ended up writing about a theoretical business plan for selling honey from his few hives.
“Once I’d written it, I jumped straight out the meeting and went to the bank,” said Scott.
“But the bank manager said: ‘Look Scott, you’ve got no business experience. We’ll give you a £5,000 overdraft’.”
He cobbled together some branded jars, bought some honey and a few more beehives and headed out selling to his neighbours for £5 a jar.
Collecting honey from local people and using his parents’ house to pack jars by hand, Scott was barely able to make a living, taking around £2,000 a year.
But then, in the fourth year of his fledgling business, Scott had a lucky break when he made the rash decision to head to London for a four-day Welsh Government trade show. He could only afford one day so picked the Tuesday, paid his £400 and headed down on the train.
“It was so much money, I was late and it was horrible and I was devastated,” said Scott. But then health retailer Holland and Barrett passed his stand and showed some interest in his honey.
Nine months later, they put an order in for 25,000 jars. At that point, Scott was still jarring and labelling everything by hand and his mini production line went into overdrive.
“I spent that next Christmas just putting music on, all day every day, just in there just labelling and jarring,” explained Scott.
“I didn’t want to commit to anything in case they let me down. I thought I’d do it as I was then and if it all paid off, then great.
“If I had chosen any other day they (Holland and Barrett) wouldn’t have come. They were only there one day. Now, saying that, it makes me feel a bit queasy because if I had chosen Sunday or Monday I might not be where I am right now.
“You make your own luck, but it was unbelievable.”
In 2015, Scott turned over £600,000 and he realised he could make some decent money.
“It was four years of pure pain and heartache and absolutely no money,” laughed Scott.
“Any sane person would’ve given up because it was brutal, it was horrible – I had no friends or social life. I didn’t have a plan B, I had to make plan A work. That’s what made me see those four years out – sheer determination, I was hellbent on the fact it was going to work.”
He started employing people and moved into a proper industrial unit, and then went to Tesco, the biggest retailer in the country, and said to their head buyer: “You’re a British retailer but you’re not selling any British honey – what the hell is that about?”
Scott wasn’t prepared for their response, saying: “The buyer said I totally agree with you – can you launch these two lines in 500 stores?
“And I went: ‘Oh my days’ but said ‘Yes, 100%.’ I went back to my little village and my tiny unit and said ‘Right guys, we’ve got to do an obscene amount of jars for Tesco now.”
It’s because of the hard-fought battles to get his honey on the shelves of all the major supermarkets that Scott isn’t one for getting nostalgic and patting himself on the back. When he sees his jars while he’s doing his weekly shop, he doesn’t get mistyeyed about his journey.
“If I had woken up one day and someone said: ‘Hey Scott, you’ve got all your products in Tesco’, I would have gone, ‘ Oh my days’, but now I just look at it and think: ‘Thank God.’ I am proud but also, because it all gets lost in the trenches and the fight for everything, it just has to be there.
“It’s not a nicety, it’s a necessity. It is a nice thought but I’m just not that nostalgic. I don’t look back, I always look forward. I’m never one to celebrate a milestone and just be happy. I start thinking how we can get another line into Tesco. That’s probably the reason why we’re the 26th fastest growing country in UK, according to the Sunday Times Fast Track 100 league.”
Being ranked so highly was one of the greatest “wow moments” for Scott since he started his business venture.
“I had always read about these companies,” said Scott.
“To pick it up nine years later from a standing start and a five grand overdraft, you do think how the hell did that happen.”
Scott has little time for bees any more. Hilltop is the second biggest honey supplier in the UK and sources honey from all over the world. Yet he is far from happy to sit back and enjoy his success and is expanding the business into maple syrup, agave nectar and the beauty industry. And even though he is now able to pay himself more than £2,000 a year, most of the profits are ploughed back into the business.
“I’m so tight it’s unbelievable,” Scott said with a self-deprecating laugh. He admits to having splashed out on a nice electric car, but that’s about it.
“It’s all going back into the business because we’re nowhere near where we can be yet,” said the married dad of one, who has another baby due this year.