Preston admits that raising awareness of the brand has also brought many unforeseen challenges. Whereas Babylicious is currently the only frozen baby food provider in supermarkets that doesn’t mean there’s no competition.

“Our competition is really any business in our area that has loads of cash to throw at brand awareness,” she says. “It’s staggering how much money is needed to support brands in food retailing. We’re talking hundreds of thousands, for trade marketing, promotional activity, buying a space in the magazine, working with the buyer to produce a plan, consumer marketing such as couponing and leafleting, radio or TV.”

A lack of marketing money is compounded by the fact that in the baby food market consumers churn all the time. Babies grow, and after about 12 months they are out of the market, so Babylicious’ challenge is to constantly find ways to talk to the consumers. “We have to keep marketing because it’s like a conveyor belt. When I first started it never occurred to me that this was essential.”

However, one promotional activity that has proved invaluable is word of mouth recommendations. “If you can persuade a handful of mothers to take a risk on your product, they will hopefully recommend it. You can do that through things like leafleting – we’ve found local press very successful – incentivise people to try it with money off.”

Preston also believes that merchandising has a major impact on the growth of the brand. Having the product where mothers expect to find it is paramount. “My passion is to get freezers into the baby aisles of all of the retailers because that’s how we grow it, because we’ve got the product where the mothers are.” So far only Asda is playing ball, but she says this is a step in the right direction.

She has also recently taken the difficult decision to outsource sales and marketing, reducing the number of staff on the books from 15 to nine. And while she admits this was a tough decision, she’s confident it was the right one. “They have the skills, the experiences and the contacts and they’re very good at it.”

She adds that sales and marketing should have been more of a focus from day one, in terms of both funding and personnel. “It’s extraordinarily tough to launch brands. In hindsight I’d say you need at least half a million to start.”

Ext en d in g th e brand

Although she feels her start-up fund was nowhere near enough, she has since made amends, securing investment to the tune of several million. The decision to “professionalise” the business – hiring staff and securing premises – followed on from awards success. “This was a monumentally fantastic achievement, because it had no boundaries, we were just deemed to be the best business in the country.” A barrage of positive feedback from mums also helped to attract investors, as did the rising profile of childhood obesity.

Preston has continued to plough revenues back into the business, so although Babylicious is not profitable this is intentionally so. This strategy has enabled the launch of two new lines: Kiddylicious, a frozen meal range for toddlers launched in 2005, and Snackylicious, a range of kids’ snacks (apple rings dipped in fruit juices and dried) was launched in Boots in August.

And she’s not stopping there. Product development is what Preston does best and she plans to take the brand, which she says will be worth about £3.5m this year, much further. “The brand will stretch using ‘licious’, which feels quite comfortable to me because it’s endless, you can play with that for hours.” She has also set her sights set on taking it overseas, and has trademarked globally in anticipation for this.

Preston insists she wouldn’t take the plunge if she had her time again – but her passion makes you wonder if this is true. As she says: “Every business has its really dark days, when you think, I can’t do this. And then you get an email saying ‘thank you, you’ve changed my life because you’ve given me back time’, and you think, that’s why I do this.”

Sally Preston has recently completed a two-year term on the Small Business Council, advising the government about the impact of legislation on small companies. She will be one of 20 leadership experts speaking at the Leaders in London International Leadership Summit 2007 on November 27–29 at Central Hall Westminster. For more information or to register for the event online please visit www.leadersinlondon.com