This month we caught up with Elisha Cannon – co-founder of Folc , a multi-award winning and sustainable English wine brand, taking on the industry leaders of Provence. Distributed nationwide via their online platform, trade and wholesale, including in the skies with Virgin Atlantic.
This is part of Ignition Law’s ‘Igniting The Spark‘ series, where we spend five minutes with inspiring entrepreneurs, talking about the key moments that defined their careers.
Tell us a little bit about your business and what you do…
Folc, a word meaning people, tribe and community from the Old English noun ‘folk’, is an English rosé made exclusively for its very meaning, the wider community. We’re a wine producer who believes that good wine should bring people in, not shut them out, and we have achieved immense success in our business’ short life span, sparked by our passion but with no prior wine experience and without our own vineyard or winery. Both Tom and I as co-founders left our careers in London as a venture capitalist and lawyer, and went from launching Folc in a kitchen in Devon at the start of the first COVID-19 lockdown to now being the highest scoring still English rosé in the country, breaking the mould as the only person of colour to co-found an English wine business and create a Provençal looking rose, but made in England.
The moment that ignited the spark in me to start a business was…
The realisation that we didn’t want to wait until we reached early retirement to spend our days pursuing something that we were truly passionate about and that other people wanted and appreciated.
The toughest challenge I’ve faced in business is…
Every day as an entrepreneur brings challenges. There will always be something new that you are doing for the first time, and you will need to learn to be robust enough to face those challenges without trepidation that you are not an ‘expert’ in that particular business area. Once you do a task or work in a new area once, it is no longer new, and you can let go of the mentality that ‘this is not my job or area of expertise’.
The biggest success has been…
Entering our wine into international wine competitions and scoring higher than world renowned Provencal rosé brands, showing that Folc as an English rosé can compete on a global scale. Plus, every year that your small business continues to grow and survive in itself is a success given the statistics on how many start-ups fail.
I’m very good at…
Learning but not comparing. As an entrepreneur I think it’s incredibly important to be open to learning from others on a daily basis and accepting that not knowing something doesn’t mean you’re a less successful business owner than others, but not comparing your business or yourself as an entrepreneur against a competitor or similar. I’ve learnt that comparison in that respect will never lead to positive outcomes!
The type of person I look to recruit is…
Someone with ambition, integrity and a desire to be a part of something bigger, be that in both a team context and business ethos and mission context.
The part of my day I most look forward to is…
Sitting down with our team and hearing their news and insights, being able to connect in a wider environment which is predominantly remote based working and digital make these moments really important for the health of the team and business.
If I could give fellow entrepreneurs one piece of advice it would be…
Find ways to detach yourself from work at least once a day. Entrepreneurship is relentless, there is no annual leave, sick days, traditional working hours or colleagues to moan about the boss with, so finding a way for you to take a step away from your business is incredibly important both from your mental health perspective but also to allow you to step back into your office with renewed energy and creativity.
Outside of work I can be found…
On my yoga mat or outside with my two Bernese Mountain Dogs.
My philosophy on life is…
All you have is this moment right here and right now so make that enough. If you’ve had a bad morning, a meeting which didn’t result in what you hoped, are stressed, tired, angry, etc, try not to carry that with you throughout your day or week. It will only lead to more of the same happening!
Client story
What was your business challenge?
We needed legal support with our first EIS external fundraise, something which I as a lawyer needed both expertise and time support from Ignition for, as wearing many hats in our business means attention is diverted between many things with the priority being raising funds at the time.
How did you work with Ignition Law on this? What support did we provide you with?
Helen and her team were invaluable in providing advice on the steps typically involved in a fundraise, what we could expect from investor asks, and helped us draft a template subscription agreement for the raise which addressed both of our and our investors’ concerns. It was also important for us to be able to separate the business contacts with our legal contacts for investors to feel both comfortable and assured in investing in folc.
What did you enjoy most about working with the team at Ignition?
The combination of how friendly the team are with how professional and well versed in knowledge the team are.
Explore more inspiring entrepreneur stories in the Igniting The Spark section of our website here at Ignition Law.
