British confectionery business Pure Heavenly Chocolate – a dairy free chocolate with only 1.2% sugar – achieves tremendous YTD growth of 262% (+£0.77m) after expanding their commercial team and releasing new product ranges.
Pure Heavenly appeared on BBC’s Dragons’ Den receiving three offers and being praised by Peter Jones as “the best chocolate I’ve tried in a long time”. Despite this, founder Stephen Conway, decided to reject the offer and go it alone due to the contract terms. After a rocky few years, the company has said there is now light at the end of the tunnel.
The successful performance came amid the expansion of the commercial team with Andrew Duncan, previously Lumity, joining as Head of Marketing and specialist digital agency, Nouveaux Media, joining as their paid media partner. Leading the growth is the e-commerce business which has been boosted by a range of new dark chocolate flavours, gifts and members club subscription.
On the recent success and appointments, Conway said: “It can be quite daunting to turn down the Dragons’ offer, but I believed in my vision – of making delicious chocolate for everyone to enjoy – too much to compromise it for investment. I’m absolutely ecstatic to see the growth of our business which makes me excited for our future. Not only for us, but for our customers and our future employees as we expand.”
Amidst the ecommerce growth, Pure Heavenly have turned their sights to expanding their availability in physical retail. The business have very recently gained their SALSA accreditation which they hope will open doors for them to be able to make their chocolate more accessible to consumers that aren’t online – but that still have a need for low sugar and free-from chocolate.
As 2021 continues, Pure Heavenly have said they have exciting plans and whilst they have shown there is life after Dragons’ Den, they ensure their story is just at the beginning.
Image credit: Pure Heavenly
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Media contact
Kiran Grewal
Editor, International Confectionery
Tel: +44 (0) 1622 823 922
Email: editor@in-confectionery.com