How we saved our business from Covid!

The devastating impact and quick turnaround

The Covid Pandemic was pretty devastating for Just Bee and its taken until now to finally come up for air. Back in March 2020, Just Bee was a honey sweetened drinks brand – sold on meals deals in Boots, Coop, Waitrose, WHSmiths, Booths plus loads of independent cafes, workplaces and travel locations.

Above: Just Bee Drinks - fruity flavoured water sweetened with a drop of honey.

Within a few weeks of the first lockdown, 80% of our sales had disappeared. We were selling an 'on the go' product, but no one was going anywhere! No one was was travelling, no one was was going to work, no one was buying meal deals, no one was grabbing a drink whilst they were out shopping.

We didn’t know what to do – this was by far the greatest challenge we had experienced in business. Everything we had worked so hard to achieve for 5 years was gone and it didn't look like it was coming back any time soon!

So what do you do? By the end of April 2020 we sat down and decided we needed a plan to save the business.

We took a look at the cash reserves in the bank and did some forecasting - if things didn't change, we have enough 'runway' to keep us in business until Sept/Oct 2020 – then the game was up. Although the first lockdown was only meant to be 6 weeks (remember that?!), it was clear that Covid-19 was going to have a much longer lasting effect on consumer behaviour. Some people said 12 months, others said more.

We decided to put the drinks business on indefinite 'pause'. Pause because maybe one day we'd bring it back, but in reality this was a nice way of sugar coating things. This involved calling up Boots, Coop etc to withdraw our drinks from the shelves. This was one of the most painful decisions, as getting listed on the shelves of these big retailers (and staying there) is extremely challenging - it had been a labour of love for 5 years! Whipping them off in a mere phone call was heart breaking. Next was the phone call to our manufacturers - "Sorry, we don't need you to make any more drinks for us" They understood, but it was going to leave a hole in their P&L too. The ripple effects of Covid were in full flow.

To replace the drinks, we had a partially formed plan. A new product called Vitamin Honey. It would be high quality honey, blended with vitamins to support the immune system. Given we were in the middle of a Pandemic, we thought this could do quite well, but most importantly we had already done a lot of market research and market testing. Back in Q4 2019, we had survey tested our customers and developed 12 recipes from chilli honey to hemp honey to chocolate honey to....vitamin honey. The 12 recipes were released as a 'Christmas special' in December 2019 and wow they had done well. The standout winner of the 12 recipes was Vitamin Honey. At the time, it was just a Christmas special, but now were were treating it as a soft launch. We were starting to pin our hopes on Vitamin Honey as our saviour product.

Above: the 12 honeys we soft launched in December 2019. By selling 12 products at the same time, we could see which ones were more appealing to customers. Purchasing data is much stronger evidence than survey survey. We could also see which ones had a higher repeat purchase rate.

Down but not out, we focussed all our efforts on our new product line. We dared to dream: could Vitamin Honey be our phoenix? We rushed it through product development. Due to lockdown, I was doing all the development in my kitchen at home. My business partner, Andy, created a new website to sell it on (using Shopify). We found new suppliers (packaging, ingredients, logistics) and by June 2020 it was ready to go. In just six weeks!

Although we were still using the Just Bee brand, this business was very different to the old drinks business. There were three major changes:

1. Product: We were launching into a brand new market. Honey. But it was honey with a twist. We were spanning honey and spreads, vitamins and cold and flu relief.
2. Sales / distribution: Unlike the drinks business, the honey would not be sold through retailers (at least, not to begin with). It would be online only. This allowed us to launch very quickly and scale with performance marketing. The launch was carried out with an email to our customer list and a few posts on social media. Tapping out the email and pressing send was pretty nerve racking. Thankfully, we were absolutely blown away by how well that first email went – hundreds of orders came flooding in day one and the same again on day two and day three. We couldn’t believe it. In fact, we hadn't made nearly enough stock and spent the next few weeks chasing our tails trying to fulfil orders!
3. Production: As mentioned earlier, the drinks were all produced by a co-packer or contract manufacturer. This is a specialist company that can white label products or produce your recipes for you. We decided to take the production of Vitamin Honey inhouse. The advantages of this were that we could do small runs, we had complete control and flexibility over our product and we could make a much higher margin. Of course, doing production also comes with its complexities, but I'll talk about that another time.

Above: Vitamin Honey was born. Original and Lemon & Ginger flavour.

Ever since June 2020, it’s just been crazy. The first few months were a bit of a whirlwind, trying to keep up. The orders grew week on week and greatest challenge was ensuring we had enough raw materials and staff to do production around Christmas and January - what we have now realised is 'Honey Season'!

It's now November 2021 and the honey business is already 4 times bigger than the drinks business was before Covid-19. Talk about a rollercoaster! We have employed more people, who were unemployed because of the Pandemic, and we are about to move into a larger premises to allow further growth. It's still hard to believe what has happened.

I wanted to tell this story because it shows how amazing things can come out of dire situations. We honestly thought the business had died - well it had - but we managed to (cue the overused word of the last 12 months) 'pivot' and resurrect the brand it in a different life form. Yes, we had a lot of factors on our side: our experience, our brand equity, the recent boom in online shopping, but none of this would have mattered if we hadn't got over the feelings of defeat and disappointment.

As a point to note, I know that there are loads of other businesses out there that were burnt by the Pandemic and didn't have similar turnaround stories. You only need to look at the high street. My heart goes out to those business owners and their teams.

I'd love to hear your business stories of lockdown and the Pandemic. Please comment below or get in touch.