Sunday, May 24, 2009 By Niall Byrne
Word of mouth is proving the best advertising for nutritional smoothie-maker Wild Orchard.
The Limerick company has just signed a contract to supply up to 300 smoothies a week to the Munster Rugby Squad. According to Wild Orchard co-founder Diarmuid Crowley, the high-profile contract had more to do with chance than hard-nosed sales.
‘‘The Munster squad was training in the University of Limerick grounds one day and, during a break, the players were drinking our smoothies in the university cafe,” said Crowley.
‘‘The strength and conditioning coach Paul Darbyshire got the number from the bottle and gave us a call to ask about the possibility of a supply arrangement. We were only delighted. It’s great to know they were drinking the product and were keen to drink more of it.”
Crowley co-founded Wild Orchard nine years ago to produce fruit and yoghurt-based smoothies, fruit purees and juices.
The company employs eight staff at a small production facility in Hospital Village and has an annual turnover of €1 million.
Wild Orchard’s philosophy is to produce fresh, healthy and nutritious products. Just one of its 330ml blackberry and blueberry smoothies contains 26 blueberries, 17 blackberries , the full daily requirement of Vitamin C and a healthy dose of antioxidants.
Commenting on the Munster Rugby deal, Paul Darbyshire said Wild Orchard’s smoothies were a highly enjoyable means of providing the squad with their fruit requirement.
‘‘They are fresh, natural, and completely free from additives and come from a local Munster company,” he said. When Crowley decided to set up Wild Orchard with business partner John O’Keeffe, he was working with Pepsi as juice business manager for Europe and Asia.
Targeting the consumer trend away from carbonated drinks towards healthier alternatives, the pair established the company with a combination of their own capital, a bank loan and €30,000 from Limerick County Enterprise Board. Additional funding has since been provided by Enterprise Ireland.
As with many entrepreneurs, the big learning curve for Crowley was sales and marketing.
‘‘Since I hadn’t come from a sales and marketing background, I underestimated that aspect of it. I felt we had such a good product, people would see it and buy it and then buy it again,” he said.
‘‘That was a bit naive knowing what I know now about the importance of branding and packaging. Until we got a handle on that, it was difficult to grow and gain momentum.”
The company recently revamped its website to include blogs and a user forum. Crowley sees the internet as a valuable tool for building brand awareness.
‘‘It’s been a good way to get feedback and find out what people like and don’t like about the product and the company,” he said.
‘‘A lot of our consumers would be quite savvy as regards the internet. They’d spend time online and would be searching for interesting bits of information on their computers or mobile phones.”
The upward trend in the smoothie market, which has been growing consistently at an annual rate of 20 to 25 per cent in recent years, has come to an abrupt halt. In 2008, Crowley said the market contracted by more than 25 per cent. Wild Orchard is countering the effects of the recession by building synergies with other local food producers.
‘‘We’ve partnered up in recent times with some small Irish food companies and helped each other out in distribution and sales,” he said.
‘‘We carry some of their products on our vans and that’s allowed us to increase the value of each sale to our customers. They carry and promote our products in places we don’t go ourselves. It’s had a positive impact on the business.”
