The programmes featuring charismatic tycoons and wannabe businessmen and women are helping to create a new generation of whiz kids who want to make millions by creating their own companies.
Seven out of ten young entrepreneurs claim Sir Alan Sugar’s hit show The Apprentice — which starts a new series tomorrow night — and programmes like Dragons’ Den have influenced them to become their own boss.
Nearly 2,000 new businesses are now created in Britain EVERY DAY, with one in ten entrepreneurs leaving school at 16 to work for themselves.
They are youngsters like Fraser Doherty, 18, who has been working on his big idea for four years. He is already on his way to making his first million after clinching a deal with a leading supermarket to sell jam based on his gran’s secret recipe.
This year Fraser hopes to sell around 120,000 jars of his sugar-free SuperJam to Waitrose, part of the giant John Lewis empire.
The first batch of 50,000 jars hit the shelves of 130 stores in the UK last week.
There are three flavours and they sell for ?1.49 a jar.
The young entrepreneur, who won an Enterprising Young Brits award for his original jam products in 2004, hopes his special conserve will corner five per cent of the ?90million-a-year market — bringing in ?4.5million over the next five years in retail sales.
Fraser insists his success is down to the secret recipe, which was passed on to him by his gran, Susan Doherty, 69.
He said: “I can’t reveal the exact details of the recipe. But the main secret behind ‘SuperJam’ is that it is sweetened using grape juice, instead of sugar or artificial sweeteners. And I use ‘superfruits’ — cranberries, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries and rhubarb — which are all particularly high in a range of nutrients.
“My gran has been making jam for as long as I can remember. I started helping her out when I was younger.”
Fraser, who is a first-year business and accountancy student at Strathclyde University, started his jam-making business when he was just 14 — with just ?2.
He said: “I went out and bought some fruit and sugar.
“I made about four or five jars of jam with that and I sold them to make a profit. I started selling it to the neighbours and I was soon doing church fairs, delis and local markets.
“I left school at 16 and took a year out to concentrate on the business before going to university. Soon I was working 16 hours a day, seven days a week to keep up with the demand for 1,000 jars a week.”
He started his own production line in his parents’ kitchen in Edinburgh.
But soon there wasn’t room for the jam factory to prosper, crammed into the family home with mum Anne, dad Robert, and brother Connor, 14.
Fraser said: “I couldn’t go on like that and decided I had to do something to get the business out of my parents’ kitchen.”
Determined to turn his Doherty’s Preserves company into an international brand, Fraser went along to a ‘Meet the Buyer’ event at his local Waitrose, where he had a chance to promote his products. Supermarket chiefs were so impressed with Fraser’s pitch they decided to stock his SuperJam product.
After clinching the valuable supermarket deal, Fraser moved production to a factory in Herefordshire. He says: “I want SuperJam to become an international brand so that when people think about jam, they’ll instantly think of SuperJam.”
Proud gran, Susan, who is originally from Donegal, says the jam recipe has been passed down for generations.
The retired auxiliary nurse said: “I come from an Irish family and we were always making bread, jam and marmalade and things like that.
“I made strawberry jam, plum jam and marmalade. I’m glad I inspired Fraser to start up the jam business.
“He is a very determined young man, and he was always thinking of ways he could start up his own business. We’re all waiting for him to hit the big time.”
A spokesman for Waitrose said Fraser had “completely reinvented” jam.
A ?10,000 prize has been put up to help a top young entrepreneur get their business off the ground.
The Shell Livewire Young Entrepreneur Of The Year awards are open to people aged 16-30 whose businesses will have been trading for between three and 18 months on March 31, 2007.
Apply online at www.shell-livewire.org/win10k. Entries must be in by March 31, 2007.
Mompreneurs® Still Going Strong—10 Years and Counting
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