As I said, we moved to this factory in '97. We started with one unit -- number 13 -- which we regarded as bad luck, but in our case wasn't bad luck at all, it was good luck. We started with humble resources: we started with my wife, some relatives and myself. We had some difficulties in the beginning. I used to drive by, looking for shops, showing them our products.
The business started to grow gradually. In the initial years we were expanding at the rate of 100% every year between 1997 and 2000. By this time, we felt that we should make a bigger move, such a move contained a risk at the time.
The idea was to move to a bigger space and produce more, but if we didn't have enough customers to cover that, we might go bust.
So, I had to work hard to find new customers to cover the new expansion and I succeeded.
It was a turning point. I told them at the time "either now or never" and competition is very big in London especially in food production, if we didn't make that move a competitor might easily emerge and take our position in the market. So we took that risk and we took two extra units, numbers 15 and 16. We started to contact big names in the market, contact what was called Europa Group, which includes Cullens and Harts, and then we went to start with Wagons, than Somerfield, then with Whistlestop group a company that used to provide airports with food.
Then we started to specialise. We made vegetarian food and we started to provide specialist shops like Fresh and Wild and others in London, and we participated in exhibitions in London twice. Last year we participated in an exhibition in France. One was called Organics, I don't remember the other one, it was in Olympia. Last year we participated in an exhibition in Paris, in Ceil, which is an international food exhibition, for food products.
As I said, we started as a family working alone, now we have 30 workers, and we are part of the BRC, which is the British Royal Consortium. We have a higher level of quality.
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