In this article, Spice Kitchen founder Sanjay Aggarwal discusses the power of collaborations and how they have helped him grow his business over the last decade. Spice Kitchen is an online business selling spices and gifts direct to customers and also to retailers across the UK.
Collaborations help with visibility
When I set up Spice Kitchen ten years ago, we were a small business with big ideas but – at the time – little reach. Strategic and carefully chosen collaborations meant that we could benefit from one another's customer base. A great example of this was our collaboration with Bloom and Wild.
No one would think that a spice company and a flower delivery service were the ideal match, but that's actually what made this so enjoyable. We got creative and came up with some clever ideas that ultimately saw our mulled spices and hot chocolate products being paired with gorgeous flowers for thoughtful gifts.
But more importantly, our little businesses benefited from gaining exposure with an entirely different customer base, and the feedback from Bloom and Wild was that it did the same for them.
Collaborations can help you enter new markets
Through collaborations, we have been able to work with some genuinely exciting brands that have opened up new markets and possibilities for us. For example, we started to create bespoke spice blends for Dan Toombs, who you'll likely know as The Curry Guy. In turn, this allowed us to approach other master chefs and the restaurant chain Dishoom, with whom we collaborated to create a bespoke spice tin.
Interestingly, our partnerships with these two brands helped us secure a book deal this year because the testimonials from these well-known and respected businesses helped us build our offering. In turn, we've helped chefs and restaurants who have had to pivot to food delivery throughout the pandemic.
Collaborations can help with innovation
Collaborating with other entrepreneurs or small business owners is a hugely creative process, and I've been blown away many times at the ideas that come from these sorts of discussions. One person can make a simple comment or suggestion, and then another in the room will pick up and run with that suggestion in ways you just would never have thought. The key here is to have that open mindset where you can just let everyone run with the creativity and not try to block it.
Collaborations can help with problem-solving
When you get two or more small business owners or entrepreneurs in a room, you have a deep well of expertise. Getting together with others in similar positions to you will undoubtedly help everyone involved. You are bringing together so many different perspectives, levels of knowledge and, of course, creative brains.
You can get help with anything from technology-related questions to peer coaching and consulting. And, from the perspective of collaborations, this means that you can work through ideas and new concepts quickly and think things through from a much broader standpoint than if you were sat in a room alone!
Collaborations are the future
There's a paradigm shift happening. Customers like to see collaborations, and small businesses no longer want to operate in silos. The pandemic especially brought about more of a culture of support, and I think for us at Spice Kitchen, we wanted to dig deep and work more with businesses that may have been struggling.
But more than that, collaborations are fun and exciting. They can be simple in terms of partnering to offer a competition prize, or they can be more long term and strategic, like our partnership with The Curry Guy I mentioned earlier. The key is to understand what each party wants out of the partnership early on and keep checking in to ensure that everyone is still getting those needs met as things develop.
One final note
It's important to wisely choose who you collaborate with. You want people who are going to match your energy and enthusiasm and who will bring something to the table. It's also crucial to find people who are going to challenge you and your ideas because there's massive growth in that.
