Angus Thirlwell: How I made a mint from mints

Angus Thirlwell started out selling corporate mints bearing company logos. After branching out into chocolate, his company now has sales of £50m across 45 stores in Britain and two in America.

With a serial entrepreneur as a father, it's no surprise that Angus Thirlwell, 46, went into business. Unfortunately, his early ideas weren't great. "I was always trying to invent gadgets," says the founder of specialist chocolate-maker Hotel Chocolat. "One, when I was quite young, was to suck up the water from the bath and then pump it back over you to have a shower. Of course, my dad [Edwin, founder of Mr Whippy and Prontaprint] pointed out it wouldn't work because in two seconds it would be cold again."

A university dropout, Thirlwell spent several years selling software for firms in France and England before hitting on his first big idea in 1987: corporate mints. "Corporate pens were the big thing at the time. But we thought that it would be easier to fully replicate corporate colours on mints. And because they're refreshing, crisp and clean, they were business-like as well." He and a friend, Peter Harris, each contributed £5,000 and started the Mint Marketing Company from an office at Thirwell's Suffolk cottage.

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