An e-commerce company that nearly didn't make it after a catastrophic start is now ready to bring Cornish cream teas to the world, with France or Asia as potential first markets.
"Our Full Christmas Anthem hamper totally bombed," Tom Woodley, co-founder of The Cornish Company, admitted candidly while showing us around the business he set up with his brother James as the Covid pandemic hit.
"It took three hours to pack each parcel. We couldn't close it so we had to wrap them with cellophane and heat it up then my dad had to strap the hampers inside a box.
"Some of the boxes arrived to our customers completely flattened. The delivery companies didn't care. We weren't big enough for them to care. I think our very first customer was a refund. It totally flopped."
The brothers quickly launched a Merry Christmas hamper which sold enough to give them the cash they needed to secure the lease on a warehouse in Indian Queens, near Newquay, so the family home would no longer be taken over by boxes everywhere.
"In January 2021, I thought we should focus on classic Cornish cream teas. It was a natural fit. It just blew up. As soon as we launched the cream teas I could see the numbers. It felt like we'd struck gold."
Tom had just returned from a six-month stint with an e-commerce company in Hong Kong while his brother James had been put on furlough as a chef for WAX at Watergate Bay when they decided to launch The Cornish Company.
For the sibling pair it was an opportunity to put strong Cornish brands together into a 'hero product'. While The Cornish Company also sells pasty hampers and even beer hampers with ale from St Austell Brewery, it is the classic Cornish cream tea hamper that's the best seller.
Tom said that apart from the strawberry jam which is not Cornish, everything else – from Rodda's clotted cream and the scones, gin or beer – is from a Cornish independent or family-run producer.
He said that while it would be incredible to sell artisan home made pasties from tiny producers, they had to seek out pasty and scone makers who were big enough to handle the volumes needed.
He said that some of the larger high street brand turned him down at first because they see The Cornish Company as direct competition or have no need for them when they have a shop in every town in the county.
Now six years old and employing 20 staff, The Cornish Company has certainly turned a corner from its hesitant Christmas debut back in 2020.
"When we took that six-year lease it was a scary time," Tom said. "But we couldn't grow the business from our kitchen. It felt like there was nothing to lose.
"We had our millionth order last year," Tom said. "We now ship out about 600,000 hampers a year.
"If you're back at home in Manchester we can send you a hamper that'll remind you of your lovely holidays down here. People like Cornwall. They see it as an escape."
While The Cornish Company tends to be quieter in September and October, business ramps up at Christmas, with birthdays, mother's day and father's day and all the various anniversaries people celebrate throughout the year also boosting sales.
The majority of orders, whether the 'OG' cream tea hamper, the pasty or the beer one, come from out of county with London and the Midlands the top buyers.
"We send hampers all over the UK," Tom explained. "Even Northern Ireland or the Scottish Islands. We just make it clear to people that it may take two days to get there."
Tom believes The Cornish Company – now based on the industrial estate at Normandy Way in Bodmin – is ready to scale up and "conquer the world".
"We've just had our rebrand in August," he said. "Our suppliers have stayed the same but now it's all under our own packaging and brand."
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