‘It was like falling down a flight of stairs’: Owner of £10m chocolate company shares his story

A businessman who grew up pounding the pavements selling digital services to companies in his high street now owns a £10million brand.

Andrew Newlands, 41, from Croydon, is the founder of the confectionary brand, Monty Bojangles.

When Mr Newlands was 18, he spent his time selling digital services to companies along Croydon High Street, including in clubs and bars.

He said: “I used to walk up and down Croydon High Street to sell these services. It was very simple, I would create a website for them using chat rooms.

“This was before Facebook. I would work around the clock. In the evening I would grab my camera and go to these bars as their photographer.

“Then I would come home in the early hours the next morning and upload the photos on to the website I had made for the club, each carefully cropped and into their own album.

“The big idea was that people would wake up the next day after their night out and log on to the website to try and find themselves in the pictures, and chat about it in the chat rooms.

“It was honest and fun and people loved it.”

His business was called Raskals Design. Mr Newlands said: “It makes people smile, and that’s my philosophy on names, which still stands with Monty Bojangles, you can’t not smile.”

Having made his presence known in the marketing world, Mr Newlands started to receive opportunities to help food companies with visual media, not just in Croydon but across Europe.

He said: “I started to build relationships, my work moved away from the internet and into creating ideas for products. 

“I always say success in any situation comes when you work to a level of commitment which exceeds all expectations, a dedication that makes you irreplaceable.”

He was becoming increasingly efficient and learning every day from the people surrounding him. But there was never an off moment.

He said: ”You’re working with people in different time zones. I would say yes to every deadline even if they were daunting. Even if I couldn’t, I knew I could, if that makes sense.”

But then one day, he walked into a Marks & Spencer and saw his Easter egg design. He remembered how much he had been paid and decided it was time to work for himself.

Now running his own business, Mr Newlands received the King’s Award for Enterprise in April, the most prestigious business award in the country.

The award recognised the outstanding short-term growth of the business with total overseas sales for Monty Bojangles having reached an overall growth of 190 per cent over the past three years. 

Mr Newlands said: “Working for yourself is addictive and exciting, but now I am completely unemployable. It’s definitely stressful, anxiety grows with people and our capacity for it grows with it too.

“My journey definitely was not an arch of excellence, it was more like I fell down a flight of stairs.”

Pictured top: From left, Andrew Newlands at 18 when he first started his business journey and Mr Newlands now (Picture: Andrew Newlands)