Fraser Doherty’s SuperJam of the Supermarkets

Fraser Doherty grew up in Edinburgh, Scottland and at the age of 14 was inspired by his grandmother who made her special jam on the weekends.  Soon as a hobby he was making jam and started to sell it to neighbors, farmers markets, and local shops.  After a few years he developed a healthier jam to be made with 100% fruit without artificial products or added sugar. 

At the age of 16 he was written about in his local newspaper and dropped out of school with excitement to make jam every day in his parent’s kitchen and.  As his business grew, he had the dream of selling his jam to the big supermarkets.  He first went to the British supermarket chain, Waitrose.  He was all dressed up in his dad’s oversized suit and pitched his jam business idea.  They turned him down saying he needed to establish a brand name and develop a consistent way to get the jam to their store by starting a factory.  Quite downtrodden by this initial rejection, Fraser was tempted to give up.  However, his family brainstormed an idea of a comedic, comic book style brand called “Super Jam” with Fraser dressing up as the Jam Boy.  However, Waitrose was looking for something else and rejected the idea.   Finally, Fraser landed on a modern, simple, yet clear look of marketing “Super Jam” and Waitrose accepted the idea and started selling his jam across all their stores. 

With fresh success he was, at the age of 18, given entrepreneurial awards because he was the youngest supplier to a large supermarket chain.  As he continued to expand Super Jam to other large retail stores and out of country opportunities, he was mentored by a man names Kevin who had much experience in selling to supermarket and was willing to share the places he failed so Fraser could overcome those pitfalls.  Super Jam made 1.2 million in sales as of 2011.

 Unfortunately as the years passed many of the supermarkets stopped carrying Super Jam until only Waitrose remained.  After being reached out to by entrepreneurs in South Korea Super Jam has taken off again and is quite successful in South Korea and even Japan.  Through all this Fraser has given back by hosting tea parties for the elderly which was inspired by his grandma who made it all possible. 

Through it all I am most inspired by his resilience to keep trying in the face of rejection.  I see great value in finding people to are doing what I want to do and getting mentored by them is an invaluable resource.  I also am cautioned as Super Jam slowly died as no new ideas came to the business and little marketing was pursued. 

Fraser Doherty wrote a book called super business in which he tries to pass on his knowledge to others who wish to learn from his life.  During  the peak of SuperJam he traveled to 30 countries giving speeches of his success story which inspired others and with his humor brought smiles to many people through his SuperJam.