From Made in Chelsea to making it big in sweets

IF you're thinking of starting up a business in a sector you know nothing about, intending to fake it till you make it, Jamie Laing, the Made in Chelsea TV star-turned-sweets entrepreneur, reckons you're doing exactly the right thing.

- Lucy Tobin

"A lot of young entrepreneurs don't realise that naivety is your biggest weapon," the 33-year-old founder of £8 million-turnover confectionery brand Candy Kittens reports.

"When you're naive, you make all these mistakes and bundle your way through it without being embarrassed because you just don't know any different." Laing and his co-founder, Ed Williams, started out by "Googling how to make sweets"," he admits. Their search results saw them fly out to ISM Cologne, a vast German sweet trade fair, to find contacts.

"We discovered this huge place, three seven-storey buildings filled with every sweets company ever - including Haribo, Rowntrees, Maynard's. We went up to all these different companies, saying, 'Hey, guys, we've got a great idea for a vegan sweet we really want to make!""

The industry tycoons weren't impressed. "Now I realise it was like going up to Tesla and saying, 'can you make an electric car that we've come up with?' Knowing now what I know, I'd never have done it like that. But being naive, we just had a go. And it often works out that way."