Adrian Barlow is, it’s fair to say, a tour de force in the modern industry. Across fresh produce, few individuals have been as synonymous with the products they promote as Barlow to English topfruit, and the man who estimates he’s made over a thousand media appearances is leaving behind some very sizeable wellies to fill as he slips gradually into retirement.
There are all kinds of adjectives you could use to describe the ex-chief executive and outgoing chairman of English Apples & Pears (EAP) – dynamic, eloquent, passionate and occasionally controversial all jump to mind. He’s also a journalist’s dream, with a rare understanding of soundbites and the need to serve up an angle that makes neat headlines. When I pay him a visit at EAP’s unpretentious office at East Malling, it’s typical of the man to offer the best part of an entire working day to talking me through his life and career.
You might not be surprised to hear that Barlow always wanted to work in the industry – he describes himself as “besotted with farming” and “mesmerised by the sound of tractors” from as young as two years old – but his journey into the trade took a rather more circuitous route.
Barlow did briefly achieve his lifetime ambition of running his own farm – a dairy business in Devon – but it didn’t live up to his dreams. “It was too small and I could see myself being tied to the back of cows for a very long time,” he recalls. “Farming was also going through a difficult period.”
Instead he moved into sales, which seemed a natural segue for him. Barlow accepted a job as a regional salesman at Schweppes, undertaking an invaluable eight-week training course that would serve him well throughout his career.
He stayed through multiple promotions and significant moments in the company’s history – not least the merger with Cadbury in 1969 – before taking a job reorganising the sales team at Thomas French, a specialist in curtain tapes, hooks and rails, in 1979. That gave him a first experience of selling to the major garden retailers and sheds and an early insight into the rapidly-expanding multiple retail arena.
From there he went on to become sales and marketing director of haberdashery and stationery suppliers Whitecroft (Lydney) in 1986. Barlow, you get the feeling, could get excited about anything, and it’s easy to see how he could make a success of selling such mundane items as paper clips and curtain hooks. It’s an admirable trait, and ultimately made him the perfect man to get the public excited about apples and pears – products that were starting to get overtaken by more glamorous upstarts like berries and prepared fruit.
His journey into topfruit began when he joined Home Grown Fruits – a forerunner of Fruition – in 1990 to help with the logistics of developing snack products. In 1995, he helped EAP organise a polybag promotion and Barlow was in essence ‘loaned’ to the organisation to help get the initiative off the ground. Winning the support of every major multiple and helping sell the whole British industry’s crop, he had already shown his capabilities as a marketer and established a template for what was to prove a successful formula.
Campaigns with 80s and 90s magician Paul Daniels and the Cox promotion followed, and it was unsurprising therefore when the opportunity to join EAP full time arose. Barlow was running his own consultancy in 1998 when he was asked to take on the Bramley campaign in addition to the Cox promotion, and by the turn of the millennium he had assumed the role of chief executive of EAP.
Barlow realised it was important to focus on the commercial aspects, and getting all the key supplier chief executives on board was key. The campaign itself, he says, had to be hard-hitting and impact on both consumers and the retailers. At that time he was convinced the way to make a splash was “to play the sex card” and Barlow went on the front foot. Controversially using a topless model, backed by the story that EU money could not be used to promote English apples, the campaign quickly caught the attention of the press. Knowing what buttons to push to catch the eye was a useful skill, and whatever you think of the methods, the campaign achieved the kind of coverage rarely seen in fresh produce.
There were critics, but Barlow was unrepentant. “I said ‘look, we’ve got to come into the real world. We can’t live in the 19th century, or even the 20th century. We’ve got to come into the 21st century. We’ve got to do whatever is necessary in order to attract the interest of consumers so that they buy English and demand English.’ And if we did that we could persuade the retailers that they had to stock English.”
That attitude laid the groundwork for Barlow’s approach during his tenure at EAP – engage the industry, sell the story to the media, create demand from the public and get the retailers on board. It is a multi-pronged approach that has served him and the industry very well.
You could write a book on Barlow’s achievements and anecdotes over the following 15 years or so, but suffice to say it was an eventful and highly successful period. Challenges remain, but nobody would argue EAP isn’t in a stronger place for his efforts than when he arrived.
Many well-known figures and companies have impressed Barlow during his 26 years in the trade, but in particular he is keen to namecheck Adrian Scripps, Paul Mansfield and Clive Goatham as having driven the industry forwards at various times. He also doffs his hat to Peake Fruit, Wye Fruit, Newmafruit, as well as individuals such as Robert Balicki, Mark Culley, Andy Sadler and John Breach. He reserves special praise for Robin Pooley and Sir Ben Gill for their drive, help and support, as well as others that are too numerous to list. You get the feeling he doesn’t want to leave anybody out.
“The support I’ve had from pretty well everybody in the marketing and sales organisations has been colossal,” he adds. “And without it I wouldn’t have been able to do what we’ve achieved. They made it all possible.”
In terms of naming his proudest achievement, Barlow doesn’t hesitate: “Without any doubt it’s impacting on the public so they have increased the demand for English apples and getting the message through to them as to why they should be doing that,” he says. “And I would combine with that the leadership that has been given to the industry.”
What about regrets? “I wished we’d held onto the in-store promotional activities and we were still controlling that. If you’ve got a body that is doing that, you take out any competition between different suppliers in relation to promotional activity. Probably it’s unrealistic in today’s environment though.”
You wonder how Barlow will cope with retirement away from the buzz of the spotlight, but it’s no surprise to hear he’s got plenty of ideas for how to spend his time. Technically he’s stepped back to be chairman for the short term, but given that he doesn’t want to overshadow new CEO Steven Munday, he feels it only fair that he makes his exit swiftly.
“The industry has given me a lot. I’ve had hugely happy times, a huge amount of support, and I wouldn’t want to walk away from that,” he insists. “But I don’t want to get drawn back into doing a lot of things that ought to be done by somebody else.” Therefore he will be retaining his work with the National Fruit Collection Trust, British Growers and an EU forecast working group, but otherwise it will be a case of gardening and decorating the house, travelling to destinations such as Australia and St Petersburg, and even writing up his family’s history to preserve some of the great stories and anecdotes of several generations of the Barlow clan.
There should be plenty of those and you sense, therefore, that he will keep busy.
Barlow in his own words:
“I was taking Farmers Weekly to read at school as a 10-year-old. People were quite amused by that.”
“If you go to the national press and say ‘the English apple season is about to begin’, they’ll just yawn. You have to go to them with a story that really interests them, like last year we highlighted new technology being used in the industry.”
“Chris Evans has been great, as has Vanessa Feltz, Simon Mayo, Henry Kelly – there have been a lot of broadcasters who have offered good support. They’d call me a friend of the show.”
“If EAP had not been in existence, the industry would not be where it is today. In 2006-07, we sold 57,000t. This last year we sold 112,000t. That’s been, with the exception of 2012, a progression of increases. It hasn’t just been EAP, but what we’ve done is impact on consumers and retailers.”
“The industry is more united than it’s ever been. We achieved a lot and there is a preparedness to work together and towards achieving the same ends, without any suggestion that people are conniving or breaking competition rules.”
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