Charlie Bigham, founder of his eponymous gourmet food brand, has revealed how a ‘painful correction’ during the 2007 financial crisis forced his business to sharply refocus its priorities. ‘Our stuff was just taken off the shelves because everybody panicked,’ says Bigham in the latest podcast from Piper’s second season of ‘How I Grew My Brand’

We are curious creatures here at Piper and, as part of this curiosity, we love hearing and learning from inspiring leaders. This is part of the reason for holding regular events at our offices bringing together entrepreneurs growing challenger brands – a couple of weeks ago, we hosted 20 entrepreneurs at our annual food and

The humble dog is no longer just man’s best friend – it has overtaken close family members in our affections, according to our latest survey, in association with pet lifestyle website PetsPyjamas. Piper currently has two leading natural pet food brands in its portfolio, Barking Heads and Forthglade. More than half (55%) the UK’s dog

Turtle Bay founder Ajith Jayawickrema, who moved to the UK from Sri Lanka at the age of 15, has revealed how singer Leona Lewis unknowingly inspired him to launch his highly successful Caribbean restaurant chain. ‘My girls were young and we were watching X Factor – and a girl called Leona Lewis won it,’ says

Do founders need a little more love? When do you know if you’ve backed the wrong horse? And how can you build the ‘IKEA of tights’? These were just some of the questions posed at Piper’s latest Founders’ Collective, a quarterly gathering of entrepreneurs each focused on a different consumer sector. Three speakers representing Piper’s

Alex Reilley tells us about how a ‘Game of Thrones’ approach to business, which involved defining ‘the Cause’, enabled him and his team to turn Loungers from a small café-bar chain into a hugely successful nationwide brand. ‘The biggest challenge was dealing with the scale,’ reveals Alex in the second of our ‘7, 17, 70’

As investors in consumer brands, it can be dispiriting to read the papers, bombarded with tales of woeful mismanagement and a gloomy malaise, a self-fulfilling prophecy fast becoming a hardened reality. It can be just as depressing walking the streets and seeing prime Central London vacancies adorned with the red banners of closing down sales,

Last month, we invited some of the most exciting and innovative food and drink brands to our sixth SeedMeet at Piper – a round-table forum for entrepreneurs to hear from three key industry experts and discuss the issues and opportunities they are currently facing. In this session, our three inspirational speakers were: James Bailey, Trading