Liverpool has always been connected to the rest of the world, and that’s something you feel even running a small business from Formby.
In my case, that connection stretches 5,000 miles into the Ecuadorian Amazon, where we work directly with cacao-growing communities, sourcing the raw ingredient behind chocolate. It’s not the typical way this industry operates, but it says a lot about how people are starting to think about what they buy and where it comes from.
For a long time, supply chains have been built on distance. The further something travels, the harder it becomes to understand how it’s been produced and who’s been involved along the way. That’s just been accepted as part of the process.
More and more, people are starting to look at that differently.
For us, it’s meant building relationships at source and staying involved from the beginning, not just picking things up once they’ve already been processed and packaged. You get a much clearer sense of the work that goes into it, and the people behind it, when you’re closer to that part of the journey.
It’s not always the easiest way to run a business, and it definitely takes longer, but it keeps that connection intact in a way that matters.
Being based here makes you think about that a bit more. This is a place with a long trading history, and while that story isn’t always straightforward, it does make you consider how businesses operate today and what responsibility looks like in practice.
For me, that comes down to who you choose to work with and how those relationships are built over time.
As the business has grown, we’ve noticed more people taking an interest in where things come from and how they’re produced. Not in a passing way, but in a way that shows they actually want to understand it.
That has an impact. It raises expectations and gives smaller businesses the chance to do things in a more considered way without being pushed to cut corners.
We’re still building, but the thinking behind it hasn’t changed. Stay close to the source, understand the full journey, and make sure that connection between places like Formby and Ecuador means something on both sides.