Gavin Blowman

Name:

Gavin Blowman

Business:

Chooba

Web site:

www.chooba.eu

Years in business:

Number of businesses:

I’d just finished my degree in Documentary Film Making at the University of Sunderland as well as the Colorado Film School. I won a Royal Television Society award for Best Student Factual Film, but after working at ITV for a short time, I knew the industry wasn’t for me.

Having worked for a graphic designer for eight years prior to going to university, I decided to start a business as a freelance designer. Enjoyable, but not too scaleable!

One day my now business partner, Fabian Pohl, wandered into the office where I was operating from the University of Sunderland and asked if I could brand his new company.

“You’ll never have heard of this product,” he said. As it happened, not only had I heard about it from my time spent living in the China town district of Sydney, I’d come back to the UK three years earlier, intent on setting up a business selling the exact same product!

Chooba, as the product is called, uses quality ingredients like milk, blossom honey and Chinese red tea. Think of a Frapuccino, but instead of coffee, we use tea. It’s loosely based on a drink called bubble tea that is massively popular amongst teens and young adults in Asia, and is gradually gaining popularity elsewhere.

Chooba also contains little ‘Chooballs’ which are sucked through a fatstraw and chewed along with the drink so it keeps the hunger at bay as well. When I tried it, it was a weird experience at first, but one I got used to and would regularly buy one as I made my way to work.

The day that Fabian came into the office and we realised we had the same passion for a unique idea, it was exactly what I needed and we’ve never looked back since.

I truly believe that all things happen for a reason, and I must have been subconsciously been sending out signals that I finally wanted to follow my dream of starting a business like Chooba, which is such an exciting product. It was really the best thing that could have happened in my life at that time. It still is - these are exciting times!

When we first started the business, we moved into St Peter’s Gate; Sunderland University’s business incubation centre. It was a great idea - professional business space should never be underestimated.

We received some great support from the manager there and she put us in touch with the likes of Business Link and N-Star. From these meetings we met more and more and more like- minded people and businesses, and in no time we were receiving help and advice from some fantastic business mentors.

The biggest challenge so far for us has been in the creating of the ‘instant Cassava balls’- currently this product must be cooked for up to an hour before being added to the drink. We realised that, whilst this is fine in a shop just selling this product, the time needed and the wastage just wasn’t good enough when the product is being sold alongside coffee and smoothies, which would be the case for countries in Europe.

We set about trying to create the world’s first instant, spherical and natural balls… not as easy as it sounds! For jellies in general, all of them have a flat area of some sort because of the process needed to make them.

We’re currently working with a company who use patented technology, which is completely different from anything in the past, to create our pure, spherical balls. This could really revolutionise the current product around the world, and enable Chooba to take over in areas where this product is already popular.

We originally had quite small ideas for Chooba; we wanted to open up a little stall in a shopping centre, selling a product we would have imported. This was my biggest mistake however- not listening to my mum when she said “If something feels wrong, it probably is.”

We decided to speed things up when we started, to import a container load of the powder sold in Taiwan. Big mistake. After spending thousands of pounds on a product that is essentially full of artificial rubbish, we learned our lesson that we must go down the natural route. It’s the only way nowadays.

We’ve since manufactured our very own version of the product, using only the finest ingredients. We’ve done away with the nasty artificial sweeteners and replaced them with pure granulated honey.

The non dairy creamer has gone too - that’s been replaced with good old milk. We now intend to sell our product in the marketplaces where the inferior product is being sold. So went from thinking very small, to thinking very big.

I strongly believe that if you aim as high as you can, then what you end up with is often better than what you would have ended up with if you’d aimed lower. Our aspirations now are to become the biggest seller of this product in Europe. And seeing as this product is pretty new to Europe, that target is well within our sights.

Last year we won the national UKBI award for best new business. That was a very proud day, and the award also gave us professional business assistance from IXC UK. We wouldn’t be where we are today without their business support.

I would always say that if you don’t know about something, then ask someone who does. That doesn’t show weakness - far from it, it shows that you’re strong enough to admit that you don’t know everything and that attitude will take you far.

Sometimes I think the business has had both a positive and a negative aspect on my lifestyle. On the one hand, I get a great buzz from achieving new goals every day, and working towards a dream.

On the other hand, I tend to have less time to spend with my friends and family. That’s no good. It’s something that I really have to work on in the future- balance is the key I believe.

If you’re thinking about starting your own business, all I would say is, you can do it. Don’t make excuses; it’s too easy to say “I don’t have a good enough idea”, “I don’t have the time”, “I’m not good enough”…you can spend your life surrounded by negative thoughts.

Shake yourself free from the negative people who don’t want you to succeed for fear of seeing you become successful. Surround yourself with positive people, and be positive yourself.

You can do it. In the words of Goethe “Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Begin it now. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now”…or in a similar vein, in the words of my typically Yorkshire mum, “Might as well or you’ll wish you ‘ad.”

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