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Today’s interview is with Chris Ives, managing director and founder of Ilkley Brewery. I was introduced to Chris by the nice folk at the UK’s Department for Business, Innovation and Skills as someone with a great story and one that would appeal to readers of this blog and listeners to my podcast interview series.
This interview follows on the back of my last interview: Time to reboot your business and you? Interview with Mitch Joel about Ctrl Alt Delete and is number sixty-three in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Here’s the highlights from the interview I did with Chris:
About Chris
Chris is a Chartered Surveyor by background but launched Ilkley Brewery in 2009 after the recession had big impact on his 20-year career in commercial property. Sales for the brewery “have grown from £40,000 in the first year to more than £1m, producing profit margins of around 15pc” (Source: The Telegraph: Southern US has a taste for Ilkley beer).
Production capacity is running at 50,000 pints a week, with bottles of the company’s leading brands, Mary Jane, Ilkley Best, Ilkley Black and Ilkley Pale now selling in Morrisons, Asda, Sainsbury and Booth supermarkets in the North as well as Harvey Nichols stores and restaurants around the country.
You can find out more the firm at their website: Ilkley Brewery, connect with them on Twitter: @Ilkleybrewery and connect with Chris on LinkedIn here.
Photo Credit: tejvanphotos via Compfight cc
Note: Do you keep up to date with get this blog via RSS Reader? Do you use Google Reader? Did you know that Google Reader is shutting down on June 30th?
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5 Comments
Enjoyed the story Adrian.
Interesting that the rules of business (know what your customers want) stay constant but the mechanism for applying them changes
Indeed, James.
What I also found interesting was Chris’ example of showing that it’s never too late to change what you do, follow your passion and create a business that customers love.
Adrian
Loved both key messages in this interview… listen to/connect with your customers (as I said in my last blog post, who are we doing this for, after all), and it’s never to late to start doing what you want/love to do. Excellent!
Annette 🙂
Hi Annette,
Your comment made me smile 🙂
Thank you,
Adrian
[…] Nick also believes that they have benefited from a change in consumer tastes and a growing interest in niche, quality providers. This is similar to the trends that Ilkley Brewery are benefiting from in the craft beer market. I spoke to Ilkley Brewey in a previous interview: Creating products that customers love – Interview with Chris Ives of Ilkley Brewery […]