The SuperJam Adventure Reaches The Magic Kingdom...
At the weekend, I visited my old pal Mickey Mouse at Disneyland Paris. He loves SuperJam*.
I was very kindly invited by European Study Tours to speak to 1,600 British school kids who were on an amazing business studies and ICT school trip.
After I went on the roller coasters, I spoke in a massive Disney auditorium to the students; sharing with them the amazing adventure that I have been on over the past few years. I told them the story of how I took my Gran's recipe from the kitchen table to the shelves of Waitrose and other massive supermarket chains.
The students enjoyed the talk and were generous enough to laugh at my awful jokes. They made me feel like a celebrity by queuing up for about forty five minutes to have their pictures taken with me!
Thanks again to European Study Tours and all of the pupils on the trip. See you next time Mickey!
I've very gratefully been invited to speak at a variety of events over the coming months. I figured I should pop them onto the blog, incase you fancy coming along. Some of the talks are at conferences that you need to buy a ticket for.
28th January: 'Enterprise Spotlight' at the University of Hertfordshire, 6pm-8pm.
2nd February: 'My Life is my Business' event at Darwen Aldridge Community Academy, 11am-4pm.
3rd February: Strathclyde University SEN event, All Bar One, Glasgow, 7pm-10pm.
1st March: Disneyland Paris, European Study Tours, all day.
6th March: Scottish Youth Parliament, Lanarkshire
10th March: Use Your Loaf event, Durham, all day.
11th March, CIPD Conference, Perth, all day.
17th March, Philip Allen Updates event, London, all day.
24th March: San Juan University, Puerto Rico
25th March: Columbia University, New York City
30th March: West Cheshire College, Chester
16th April: Maastricht University, Maastricht, Netherlands
Throughout November and December, i'll be sharing the story of how SuperJam grew from my Gran's kitchen to the supermarket shelves. You'll be able to come along and hear me speak at the following places:
As you know, as part of The SuperJam Tea Parties, we have been running a massive nationwide 'knitathon'. The elderly guests of our tea parties have been very kindly knitting thousands of squares, which we've sewn together to make blankets for these orphans in Gwalior, central India.
Every child at the orphanage, about seventy, have already got a blanket each and we still have more than four hundred squares to be sewn together - which will be sent to other orphans in India.
The orphanage, SuperJam and everyone who has been involved in putting everything together really wants to thank everyone who took the time to knit squares. The kids are over the moon with their blankets and the Sponsor a Square fundraiser (feel free to click here and sponsor the squares for £1 to help raise much needed money for supplies for the orphanage) has so far raised over £600.
You can see some more photographs of the kids with their blankets here.
The next SuperJam Tea Party is this Thursday, 2nd April 2pm-4pm at Meadowbank Sports Centre, London Road, Edinburgh. Please do come along and feel free to bring some home baking!
As reported by a number of publications, including Sky News, Fruit Pectin (which is a natural ingredient added to jam), could be beneficial to the fight against cancer.
The article says:
"The binding of pectin with gal3 (a protein that influences all stages of cancer progression) is thought to affect its ability to promote the growth of cancerous cells, according to the study published in the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology Journal.
Professor Vic Morris, who led the study, said the modified pectin used in jellies and jams was likely to produce the anti-cancer effect."
I'm going on a trip to a massive trade fair in Dubai in a few weeks. I was talking about it with my friend Anne and she told me about the rather odd obsession that the city has with Tea Pots.
I was sent some pictures of the gigantic tea pots that they have in Dubai. It seems like a pretty wacky place, I'm looking forward to go on a little drive around the roundabouts there....
You may have seen this film in cinemas last year. It is about a group of elderly people in Northampton, Massachusetts, who have formed a rock band. They have a combined age of over 2,000 years.
They have grown in popularity so much over the past few years, especially after a film was made about their story, that they play to sell-out crowds all over the world.
MSNBC Says:
"Some of what they sing shouts the honest part of growing old. Their concerts are intelligent and deep. Ninety minutes nonstop, constantly shifting from laughter to tears.
"Nothing to do and nowhere to go,” they croon. “I want to be sedated."
It took standing ovations for director Bob Cilman to convince the chorus to sing the songs they used to tell their kids to turn down."
This is, of course, similar to the story of the British group 'The Zimmers', who shot to fame last year following the release of their single 'My Generation'.
These stories are inspirational because they demonstrate that, regardless of how old you are, you can still be entertaining, funny and try to improve how other people are perceived and treated in society.
Of course, through The SuperJam Tea Parties, I hope that we are able to bring fun and motivation to the lives of thousands of elderly people who are living alone, are housebound or who live in care.
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I was recently invited to Palm Springs, California, for the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of The Year Awards.
The whole event was an incredible experience, with the best entrepreneurs from all manner of industries being recognised for the steps that they had taken to build amazing businesses, supplying ground-breaking products and creating thousands of jobs.
I met some very inspirational people who gave me some great advice and helped motivate me to take the next steps in growing SuperJam.
At the event, I was grabbed by Diane Brady, the Senior Editor of the massive Business Week Magazine, and fellow Scot, for a quick interview.
The SuperJam story was featured all around the world on Sky News this week, as a feature on 'the stories of 2008'.
You can watch the video on the Sky News website here.
It has certainly been an amazing year for SuperJam and, judging by the hundreds of emails from all around the world that have come flooding in after this feature, next year is going to be just as busy...
SuperJam is now available in most Asda stores in the UK, about 220 of them to be exact. This is a big step for the business and means that tens of thousands more people can enjoy our products on their toast or in their porridge every morning.
We're very excited to be supplying Asda, who are part of Wal-Mart; the biggest retailer in the world....
A lot of folks have been emailing for a while asking me why Ocado wasn't stocking SuperJam. Well, like lots of other wonderful retailers (such as Budgens), they have recently starting stocking the products on their site.
Ocado is a smashing online-only supermarket and they are part owned by Waitrose, so they sell most of the goodies you can buy in the Waitrose shops.
We're doing a 2 jars for £2.50 offer in Waitrose and Ocado at the moment so fill up your cupboards!
Last night I was amazed to find out that the SuperJam story has made it to pretty much the antipodal (furthest away) point in the world: New Zealand. The footage used by Five News and Sky News in the UK (and elsewhere in the world) was used by New Zealand's Channel 3. You can view the video here.
I've also found out that the story was covered this week on Hong Kong, Malta and in Spain. There'll also be a feature in one of the Norweigan papers in a few days so: hello to the international visitors to the site!
I don't mean for this to be another 'I got an award' post but this is a story I really have to write about. On Wednesday, I went over to Chicago to the 'Global Student Entrepreneur Awards', having been chosen to represent the UK (and the University of Strathclyde). I won't write about all the details but basically I had to give a 20 minute presentation to a bunch of very successful entrepreneurs about my business, what I wanted to achieve, my ethics and so on...
Originally, over 700 students around the world were nominated to enter the competition, then 26 were picked to go to Chicago and then they picked 6 based on the presentations. I got to present again and also watched some of the other five guys talking about their businesses and ideas. All of the 26 young entrepreneurs in the competition had incredible businesses, one of my favourites being Ten Minute Media - this guy, Brendan, makes websites for people like Mick Jagger and Natalie Cole. There was also a Swede, Erik, who made software for McDonald's.
I had never met such passionate and driven people my own age - we all shared an enthusiasm for ideas and enterprise and got on very well with oneanother.
Anyway, I ended up winning the competition and also got a special 'Social Impact' prize. It was a really cool few days and
I spend a lot of time trying other peoples' jams from around the world. Partly looking for ideas but mostly since I just love jam. Ocassionally, however, I come across a flavour of jam that doesn't really work.
This morning, I was trying the range of jams made by a German company called 'Muhlhauser'. They make all the old classics like Strawberry and Raspberry, which they didn't do a bad job of really. What really amazed me though was their 'blackcurrant and chocolate jam' ("with fine chocolate"). This was obviously the brainwave of someone in their marketing department ("chocolate spread sells well.....blackcurrant jam sells well....").
As wonderful as blackcurrant and fine chocolate sounds, it is quite inedible.
