Apparently commercially naive

Many years ago, the majority of our existing team were involved in the creation of BeWILDerwood in Norfolk. In fact, every one of us worked on, or in the park before it even opened, so it's fair to say we have worked together a long time and know each other well.

What we all had in common however, was that none of us had worked in or on any form of visitor attraction ever before.

We didn't even have an actual park to use in our marketing photos, so we had to make this compound image and use it across every channel.

So, as you can imagine, we had to make a lot of big decisions very fast. Many of these were with the help of serious industry players who advised us honestly and, now we know with the benefit of hindsight, correctly. So, thanks to Martin Barratt, Nick Farmer and Ros Johnson, to name but a few.

But there were loads of large, small and micro decisions we had to make on our own. Without the benefit of industry experience, we had to rely on our own instincts and beliefs.

One of the big ones was whether we should take Walls (a Unilever brand) as our ice cream supplier. They promised us 25% margins, big sales and free red umbrellas to place all over the Scary Lake decking. The offer of big red umbrellas was, in fact, the straw that broke the camel's back, and we politely declined their contract offer, just knowing in our heart of hearts that we didn't want mainstream and high street brands confusing the message of the magical world we were creating with the blatant commerciality of the outside world. We wanted to create a place that was free of other brands, other distractions and normal world comparators, that could detract from our main theme of it being all about the immersive woodland adventure play experience we’d created.

Just weeks before we opened, we flagged down the ice cream van from a super local, family owned ice cream business and asked them if they could supply us all of our ice cream requirements. After a few minor panics with the scale of the order, we settled on the fact we may run out if we got busy, but at least it would be amazing ice cream that our local customers would appreciate and had near-zero 'ice cream miles'.

We definitely made some big and small mistakes on the way, one of which was in the ice cream names. We thought it would be funny and even immersive to use names from the accompanying children’s story book, such as Sweet Sludge Pie Ice cream but VERY quickly, we noticed that people were asking what flavour it actually was underneath (chocolate brownie, I believe from memory), and this was causing serving delays and big queues.

But we also got a lot right. We sold drinks that weren't Coca-Cola, Pepsi or any other world-renowned ultra-processed mega brands. We chose local and small batch brands which were delicious, healthier and thankfully people loved them. Also, as they were largely unknown, they felt more on brand and just from the world less travelled. These unknown brands could happily sell at a premium price as few had experienced them before, they didn't know their natural price point. By comparison, paying £3 for a can of Coke inside an attraction, when you know you can buy it outside for 30 pence, just feels like profiteering.

But the HUGE win was the ice cream. It was amazing. I've been addicted ever since. It was so good, that people praised it in our online feedback. We also bought it with a better margin than we were being offered by Walls. And because it was so good, we sold twice as much as even Walls claimed we would. A genuine win, win.

Walls is just too familiar and to be blunt, too ordinary to have any form of sense of occasion. They can be bought anywhere, so how can it ever command a premium? Basic economics says that a 'me-too' product can ever command a premium price, as there's just no USP or significant differentiation.

So, we took this lesson and applied it liberally throughout the business.

We aimed to do things because they just feel right for us, our families and our brand.

We called this, behaving in a way that was 'apparently commercially naive', and it's stuck in all of our lives now, even 12 years after we exited BeWILDerwood.

A few years ago, we brought in an advisor to the board to help us with our growth. He asked all of us individually, one simple question. "Would you rather have a better job or a bigger profit'. All of us independently came back with the same answer of 'doing a better job'.

It's the way you have to behave if you're apparently commercially naive.

Again, we’ve made mistakes (plenty of them in fact) but we feel we’ve got a lot of things right too.

As we look back on 2025 and wave its challenges away as they pass behind us, we're heading into 2026 with an absolutely incredible order book and a pipeline of large and small projects to deliver, ensuring another fantastic year for CAP.CO.

Apparently commercially naive isn't everyone's way of working, but it IS ours and it's here to stay. Thanks for the memories in 2025 and see you on the other side!

Images are courtesy of BeWILDerwood - which you can visit here.