Fraser Doherty is the founder of Super Jam. It all started when he was 14 and his ‘Gran,’ as he calls her, taught him to make jam.

The young Scot decided to commercialise the product in 2006. He did the research and found that jam markets had declined as there were no healthy jams on the market. He decided to engineer his own healthy jam based on his grandmother’s recipe but without the added sugar.

This kitchen to grocery shop shelves story is one of super determination (see what I did there).

Doherty’s in, came when he met a buyer for Waitrose. He pitched his idea and they were impressed, so with this encouragement he went and got a factory that was willing to do business with him.

Being of such a young age and having limited funds, people were reluctant to do business with him, but he never gave up. He hired an ad firm to design the labels, and they came up with a superhero theme.

Fraser returned to Waitrose, product in hand only to be turned down. "They thought the labels were silly, the factory I chose was too expensive, and they didn't like the flavours," he recalls.

He is a resilient lad and so he went home found a cheaper factory that was willing to do business with him, even putting up £100,000 in working capital to buy initial stock. He also got the ad firm to re-brand the product with a more professional and homely look.

On his return to Waitrose, he received a more positive response and they decided to launch the product in their Edinburgh branch.

This was a great success for Waitrose who sold 1,500 jars of jam in a day, which is even more than they would usually sell in a month.

Super Jam currently sells to over 1,000 supermarkets in the UK including Tesco and Asda and 2009's revenue was $1.2million.

He is a refreshing change to the conveyor belt of online entrepreneurs, as the younger generation ditch traditional methods to embrace new technologies.

Thanks Gran!

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