A Tail of 5 EPIC fails

Snaffling Pig. A porky snack company. In January. *sigh*?

We're on our annual comedown. We dust ourselves off from the whirlwind of advent and Christmas. We buckle ourselves in as we stare down the barrel of another Dry Jan slash Veganuary.

It's the longest month.

So, we navel-gaze. We back-pat. We nit-pick. Often at the same time, which requires yogi-level contortion, something we are not naturally designed for.

We reflect and take smug satisfaction in things we have done well. But, is everything we have done in the past 12 months as MEGA as it could have been?

The answer is an emphatic 'NOPE'.?

Are we able to learn from these failures? HELL TO THE YES.

To celebrate some of our bigger pig's ears, we have compiled a toe-curling list to share what didn't work so well. We thought that these pigs might have flown, but alas, it turns out they were just pigs with some knock-off lipstick on.?

1. Beer-Brewer's Piggin' Dream - This ill-conceived bundle of dryness was not so much a dream, but a logistical nightmare from the start. It just didn't appeal to our customers, and in hindsight they were right. It's a case of the sum being less than the constituent parts. The bundle was pretty ropey, despite our best efforts. In the hope of responding to a pandemic-inspired home-brewing craze, we soon learned that, funnily enough, selling only dry ingredients for beer alongside some dry porky snacks made for a pretty arid experience all around. Fail factor: 9/10
2. Coffee - Who said a pork scratching brand can't sell coffee? Well, us now. We had a crack at it and we failed. It's a damn good hot beverage, but that's not what we're about and we've now woken up and smelled the proverbial coffee. And we don't want any part of it anymore. Fail factor: 7/10
3. Mug & Snack Gift Set - We love our mugs. They sell well for us, and they're fun. Our problem is not with the mug, just the fact that a mug with pork snacks in a gift set is just weird. We created this concept to respond to a buyer's request, but we should have listened to our guts that the concept was tenuous. To hammer home the lesson to us, the buyer never bought them. The swine. Fail factor: 9/10
4. Mug & Coffee Gift Set? - see the previous two ideas that should never have materialised, then combine them into a third, gloriously misjudged mega offering. The state of this. Honestly. Fail factor: 10/10
5. Cycling Shirt - The margins on this one are as snug as the shirt itself. Heady with the success of our trotter warming-socks, we decided to develop other bits of branded textiles. We're proud of the quality of the product, and its fun. But it ain't a money-spinner for us. Fail factor: 7/10

Honourary shout-outs go to our golf towels, our beach towels and t-shirts. By no means failures of the proportions seen above but they have been a distraction for us.

You know what though? Sometimes distractions can be a good thing. We're proud that we give things a go and we embrace failure. We test and learn from our customers. That's how our NPD works, and without it, we wouldn't have a Kamado BBQ range and accessories, sausage and bacon making kits, pork crackling advent calendars, Easter eggs, ham legs, Chorizo & Snaffle Bites or any Great Taste Award-winning snacks across crackling, scratchings, chorizo and nuts.

So bring on the failures of 2022, just as long as they're not the same failures as 2021. For, now we're off to unpack some mug gift sets and drain the last of our Snaffling Pig coffee to kick start the year.

Onwards!

TEAM SP x