"Am I using my colour to sell sausages? Damn right"

by Kate Pritchard - Friday, 30th May 2008 -

The Black Farmer, Wilfred Emmanuel Jones, took inspiration from Virgin tycoon Richard Branson when he launched his sausage business, using shock tactics to create a memorable brand.

“I’d spent £35,000 on developing my sausage range before I’d sold a single banger,” says Emmanuel Jones. “I was scratching my head wondering what the hell I was going to call the brand – and then it came to me. My neighbours used to refer to me as ‘The Black Farmer’. It was perfect.

“I wanted to follow Richard Branson. When he launched Virgin, using that word in public was still very risqué. You automatically thought, ‘whoa, you shouldn’t be saying that’. I wanted that element of risk. I wanted people to look at my packaging and wonder whether the brand is politically correct.

“I dared to be different. Am I using my colour to sell sausages? Damn right. Do I give a shit? No. I wanted to challenge the status quo and stick two fingers up at the system.”

Emmanuel Jones ran a sampling campaign and set up an online petition to encourage the supermarkets to stock his sausages.

His ballsy, controversial approach worked. Four years on, his brand is worth an estimated £6m and his range of sausages is stocked in Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons “We already have a one per cent share of the market and we’ve taken on the big brands such as Porkinson and Duchy.”

Wilfred Emmanuel Jones was interviewed as part of the My First Million series, sponsored by Orange.

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