Q&A: Candy Kittens co-founder on retail tie-ups, its new head office and the secret to sweet success

Ed Williams and co-founder Jamie Laing launched sweets brand Candy Kittens in 2012. Having earned B Corp status in 2022 and amassed 129,000 Instagram followers, plus 261,000 likes on TikTok in that time, it’s a brand that has certainly made some noise over the last decade.

To date, the brand has struck up retail partnerships with the likes of Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Ocado, Waitrose and the Co-op, underlining that the major grocers are keen to stock its products on their shelves.

Candy Kittens has also recently opened the doors to its new headquarters in Marylebone, London. Dubbed ‘The Sweet Factory’, the retailer says it plays a key part in fostering a “home-like working environment” for its staff, partners and customers alike, in its bid to revolutionise the typical office set-up and elevate its working culture.

As the sweets brand edges closer to achieving £50m in UK sales, Williams talks to Retail Week about the importance of its retail partners, and why it appears that every business is now a certified B Corp.

How important are retail partners to your growth?

“A huge part of our growth has come from grocery and the UK supermarkets, so the Tescos, Sainsbury’s and Waitroses of the world. That’s really where we sell the volume of our business, but I would say that we’ve built the brand enough outside of that space, so it’s a bit of both in terms of what drives us.

“We set the tone of Candy Kittens as being aspirational and different – it’s not Haribo. Hopefully, when people see Candy Kittens in store at Sainsbury’s, they’ve also seen it elsewhere and this makes customers pick a packet off the shelf. Those kinds of partnerships are super important to us.

“It’s about tempting people into sweets when they’re on the go, so the grocers are core, but also department stores, speciality stores, the likes of Costa and petrol forecourts. It’s a real mixture.

“Travel retail is also a big one for us. It’s about offering a better alternative. Because of our premium positioning and our vegan offer, it opens us up to a wider range of audiences. Just getting the product in front of as many people as possible is what’s helping us acquire new customers. I think the variety of retail definitely helps as we do a lot online as well.

“We’re also keen on collaborations. We collaborated with Netflix last year and we’ve done some stuff with BrewDog. A dream partner would be in the fashion space – we’ve got some really exciting plans coming up for London Fashion Week and it would be great to partner with a high-end British brand with similar values. Something really unexpected that raises eyebrows and gets people talking is our thing.”

How important is B Corp status in today’s market?

“We were the first sweet company, I believe, globally to become a B Corp. In one way it has become something that everybody is doing, but the way I see it is that it should be the core aim of what B Corp is about. We should all believe that it’s better to have these standards and ethics when you’re running a business.

“The UK right now is a good example, where we’re all frustrated with politics and the government and waiting for them to make the changes for us. Instead of sitting around and waiting for that, why not take the bull by the horns and make positive change yourself?

“We want to do things right here and affect the lives of the 25 people working for us. If every business took that same approach, we would be in a better place.

“B Corp isn’t something that’s dished out willy-nilly. There are a lot of businesses getting it, but there’s a lot of businesses working really hard to get it. As a consumer, it’s now a really good seal of approval that the brand you think is doing good things, really is. There’s a huge criteria and we want to keep improving our score as we go.

“You look at businesses that set the standard like Ben & Jerry’s or Patagonia and to walk in the footsteps of these kind of brands is quite a fun aim to have.”

What are your biggest challenges and biggest opportunities at the moment?

“We’re coming out of the more challenging period of the last couple of years. I think generally in this category there’s been a huge rise in the cost of raw materials and the cost of getting our product from source and onto the shelf. We’re very disciplined and can duck and dive to navigate around some of the problems, such as materials and shipping costs, that the bigger players have.

“We’ve been able to flip that in our favour and win some space and customers that we maybe wouldn’t have previously. The retail landscape generally is tough, so we’ve got to be on our A game to succeed. It’s not good enough to be just good and so far we’re finding opportunities and priding ourselves on this in a challenging environment.

“Our biggest opportunities are in distribution and brand awareness, so putting our product on as many shelves as possible and getting people to know who we are. If we can keep closing the gap on the big brand leaders in this category, we believe we can grow the brand and hit £100m revenue in the UK.

“More broadly, we would love to apply what we’ve done to other brands and other categories and apply the Candy Kittens school of thought to something else such as crisps, chocolate, ice cream or whatever it may be. We have some irons in the fire and we’re looking at some ideas at the moment.”

Tell us about the importance of opening your new HQ, The Sweet Factory?

“We’re super excited to have opened The Sweet Factory and have a space where we’re really bringing people together in real life rather than staring at screens and being disconnected. It’s early days but our team are in here every day and absolutely loving it. We only really ask people to be in two or three days a week and we find that the place is packed every single day.

“This offer of flexibility that we’re giving people through a great place to work means that people are staying late, having drinks after work and it’s becoming a clubhouse kind of feel. We’ve also had customers and suppliers come and visit. It’s very easy to read the headlines and think that working from home is the future and nobody leaves the house any more but actually we’re seeing the opposite.

”We’re proud to have a space that allows people to collaborate, partner and connect. It gives us another edge on companies that are not doing that and hopefully it speaks to the future of retail where people do like to be face to face and experience, touch and feel stuff.”