As a medical devices salesman, James Eagle travelled across Scandinavia and would frequently be met with salmon or gravlax as “the main event” on menus.

Back in the UK, he felt that thinly-cut smoked salmon was a sidenote on our plates. “I always thought that was a shame,” says Eagle.

Redundancy from his sales job in 2013 allowed Eagle to start a smokehouse from a small shed at the bottom of his garden in Camberwell, London, which turned from a hobby into the birth of his artisan brand – The Pished Fish.

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“In the UK, when you get a smoked salmon and cream cheese bagel, it’s the cream cheese and bagel you can taste,” adds Eagle. “How I likened it is with wafer-thin smoked salmon almost melting into the bagel.”

Eagle, who didn’t complete university, worked for drum and bass label Good Looking Records in the early 2000s and was PA to LTJ Bukem before turning to a career in sales.

However, being laid off at the medical devices firm left a “sour taste” and taught him a lesson in “how to look after my own staff now.”

In late 2014, Eagle ventured to farmers’ markets with homemade smoked salmon made in what he describes as a “glorified filing cabinet” smoker. He would start at 1am for the laborious 16-hour process.

He produced three different flavours, sold out every weekend and it gave Eagle the confidence that a more lucrative business was in the offing.

The Pished Fish’s USP is using botanicals and alcohol – hence the fun company name – such as whisky, aquavit and vodka to flavour its booze-infused, Scandinavian-style smoked salmon. “The ones which I thought were more fun were done with alcohol,” he recalls of his early smokehouse testing.

After meeting his now wife, Hermione, through dating site My Single Friend, the couple had attended a course on how to start a food business. Eagle’s main takeaway was not to rely on the product but to have a compelling brand.

He spent £4,000 on a design and logo. “Having someone to properly imagine what it could be was really important,” he says. “I felt it was an awful amount of money at the time, but it was the best money you could spend.”

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When a fishmonger at Selfridges later spotted the brand, the Eagles moved to East Sussex and went full-time to upscale the business. The start-up was housed on his father’s land near the Sussex Downs, at first in two shipping containers before moving to an adjacent building where Eagle today employs eight full-time staff.

The smoking technique has also been simplified with two stainless steel smokers costing £18,000. The business uses a mix of Faroese and Scottish salmon, with concoctions ranging from whisky and maple syrup to honey and bourbon. Little wonder the brand hails salmon as having a “rock and roll persona”.

When COVID hit in 2020, online orders grew rapidly and profit per pack soon outweighed the 5p it was making from supplying one supermarket’s deli counter.

In 2022, their biggest order was marked with £10,000 sales in a single day alongside the founder’s wedding anniversary promotion. Eagle says the e-commerce side has since been bolstered considerably, with email distribution now numbering 50,000.

In Christmas 2024, the business garnered £40,000 in one day and had to close the website.

“Email is a great way to know your customers. It’s a nice touch point to make it more human,” says the founder. “I think a lot of customers see e-commerce business as a bit faceless but I always try to respond personally.”

The Pished Fish’s most challenging period arrived in 2023, without the tailwind of consumers spending online at home, and then the following year when the price of fish reached record levels.

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Yet, the Sussex firm has grown 20% year-on-year since 2020 and broke the £1m barrier through 2025. It had been forecast to generate £5m revenues based on pandemic predictions, but Eagle was encouraged to pursue a slow and steady business outlook over chasing growth.

This has held The Pished Fish in good stead as Eagle aims for a £2m turnover plan in the next three years by retaining customer acquisition, spending more on advertising and growing its email list.

“Beforehand I hadn’t treated it like an e-commerce business, we were a smokehouse and selling to the general public,” he says.

Start-up mentality

I still feel we are in the start-up zone and that’s about being the face of the business and interacting with customers. We have always tried to keep a sense of humour with the brand.

Problem-solving

I am constantly trying to fix problems day to day. The dream of being in a little smokehouse, slicing fish and putting it in packs has to stop if you want to grow.

The biggest thing I still find stressful is letting people down or if an order hasn’t reached customers. There is always something keeping you up at night.

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