Innocent Excellence

Richard Reed, Adam Balon and Jon Wright

The fathers of Innocent

Would you ever give up your job to start a 500 pounds capital company that makes smoothies?

This is what, in 1998, Richard Reed, Adam Balon and Jon Wright did, they started the Innocent drinks company.

Driven by the idea that people could live a healthier life and that companies could be respectful of the environment, they created, with a 500 pounds stock of fruit, a selection of smoothies that they started selling at a music festival in London. By that time they were still not sure about giving up their jobs to start their “innocent” adventure and with an excellent marketing move they as the company's history reminds us “ We put up a big sign saying 'Do you think we should give up our jobs to make these smoothies?' and put out a bin saying 'YES' and a bin saying 'NO' and asked people to put the empty bottle in the right bin. At the end of the weekend the 'YES' bin was full so we went in the next day and resigned”.

After having resigned they found a place in Sheperds Bush, London to base their headquarters, The Fruit Towers and started the company with the help of the american investor Maurice Pinto who invested 250000 pounds into the venture.

Since then, the company has been a continuous succes, experienced extensive growth and since 2002 to 2007 was the only company to appear in the Sunday Times Fast Track 100 (the 100 fastest growing private companies in the UK) for five years consecutively.

The founders sold 58% of the shares to the Coca Cola Company raising around 90 million pounds.

The company has various challenges and aims and not small ones!

It aims to become the most sustainable company in the world but to do so there are a series of challenges that they have to face. In an interview Richard Reed states: “They can’t grow in the UK (bananas ndr). They’re coming on a boat, which will be running primarily on diesel, which emits CO2. So what do I do? To truly take carbon out of the business system, fruit from Costa Rica would have to stop. But that would mean no bananas. No bananas, no smoothies. Am I going to make that decision? No, I’m not. Am I going to find a way to get them here more efficiently? Absolutely right. We can all talk abut the little things and that’s the right place to start. But what happens when you get through that? That’s the bit I don’t know.”

This statement points out some of the biggest challenges that “green companies” have to face: business against environment, often is the issue.

What are they trying to do at Innocent is to merge the two things, like the ingredients of a fruit smoothie.....