It was 2017: co-founders Karina Sudenyte and Maciek Kacprzyk were then 22 and, as they put it, “broke students, expecting twins, with no savings, no industry contacts and just £800 to spare.”

After learning about the vast quantities of fruit that was binned for being wonky or surplus, they put their £800 into juice business Flawsome! Today it’s profitable and projecting £5 million revenues this year, having turned 76 million wonky fruits into juice, which is sold wholesale and stocked in restaurants and venues from The Royal Opera House to the National Trust. 

Their lesson to founders is: don’t just focus on going direct to consumer.

“Wholesale should be and needs to be thought of as a successful business route which can offer so many opportunities for brands to grow,” Sudenyte reports. Here’s her advice to go wholesale-first, after Flawsome!’s eight years of success:

Being in hospitality is a brand amplifier: every pour in a café, bar or brunch spot becomes a consumer trial moment. Instead of fighting for attention online, your product is sampled naturally in places where people already expect quality.

Distribution builds trust faster than clicks. Get your product on café tables, in bars and at respected venues – it instantly builds brand credibility, which is much harder to achieve through D2C alone.

Wholesale gives cashflow stability, providing consistent, predictable volumes that fund growth. You don’t burn cash on customer acquisition in a crowded digital space.

There are far fewer abbreviations! Life time value/LTV, Customer acquisition cost/CAC, ROAS/return on advertisement spend… If you’re not good at abbreviations then wholesale is for you.

Scalability: working with wholesale partners unlocks reach you couldn’t achieve alone. Foodservice buyers are gatekeepers to thousands of customers in one place. DTC is Tinder, wholesale is marriage. Foodservice listings gave us a safe way to test formats and pricing in the real world before getting big in retail. It’s a commitment with less risk.

Purpose and profit aren’t opposites: wholesale buyers, from independent cafés to national institutions, increasingly want brands with values. A clear mission helps open doors and justify premium positioning.

Think in seasons, not sprints: wholesale growth doesn’t happen overnight. It’s about patience, nurturing relationships and understanding that the biggest payoffs come from consistent service and quality.”

Read more about Flawsome! via their website and read more of our scaleup stories here.

Co-founders of Flawsome! Karina Sudenyte and Maciek Kacprzyk