Discover how beekeeper Simon Cavill transformed a hobby into BeGood, an international skincare brand stocked in Waitrose and distributed worldwide. From making lip balms using 18th-century recipes to raising £250,000 in crowdfunding within seven days, Simon shares practical lessons about international expansion, navigating tax regulations, leveraging marketplaces, and the stubborn persistence required to build an eCommerce business from absolute scratch.
What began as a simple antidote to technology has transformed into an international skincare brand distributed across multiple continents. Simon Cavill started keeping bees in 2008 as a peaceful escape from his IT career—standing in a field with a bee suit on, undisturbed by the digital world. Sixteen years later, his company BeGood sells products in Waitrose stores across the UK, ships globally through multiple channels, and recently raised £250,000 in crowdfunding in just seven days.
Simon's journey from hobby beekeeper to international entrepreneur reveals the reality behind building an eCommerce business from absolute scratch. There were no venture capital firms, no business degrees, no grand master plan—just Simon, his wife making lip balms from 18th-century recipes, and a determination to keep going even when sales didn't materialise for days at a stretch.
Before diving into tactics, we need to understand the philosophical shift that separates hobbyists from business owners.
"I used to work in IT and I did beekeeping as the sort of antidote to technology," Simon explains. "You can stand in a field with your bee suit on and just be. Nobody wants to come near you."
This peaceful hobby became the foundation for something much larger. As Simon became known as "the bee man" in his Hampshire village, he discovered honey's bartering power. But the real transformation began when his wife started experimenting with beeswax and honey, creating lip balms and hand creams using recipe books dating back to the 1700s.
"We left out the lead and we left out the ambergris," Simon jokes about modernising these historical formulas. "But apart from that, they were fairly authentic."
The turning point came in 2013 after five years of selling at local fetes and fairs whilst managing online orders through a basic WordPress website. Simon faced a decision many founders recognise: either commit fully or abandon the venture before it consumed their lives entirely. He chose to commit, raising angel investment and transforming BeGood from kitchen-table hobby into proper business.
Simon's approach to going global wasn't about following conventional wisdom—it was about pragmatic experimentation and learning through doing.
Rather than attempting to build separate websites for each country, Simon leveraged Amazon's Pan-European programme. This strategic choice allowed BeGood to test multiple markets simultaneously without the overhead of managing individual sites.
"We're on Amazon UK, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain," Simon explains. The Pan-European approach meant inventory stored in UK fulfilment centres could reach customers across Europe efficiently, with Amazon handling the complexity of cross-border logistics.
For markets outside Europe, Simon discovered PayPal's "pay with PayPal" button—a surprisingly effective tool for international expansion. "We get quite a lot of sales from Australia, New Zealand, even places like Taiwan," he notes. This simple integration opened worldwide markets without requiring complex payment gateway configurations for each region.
International expansion brings tax complexity that trips up many eCommerce businesses. Simon learned these lessons firsthand.
"If you're sending stuff into Europe, you've got to make sure you're charging the right amount of VAT," he explains. "So if you're in the UK, you're charging 20%. If you're selling into Spain, they've got different VAT rates depending on what the product is."
The challenge intensifies with customs duties on shipments outside the EU. Products under certain value thresholds avoid duties, but exceeding these limits triggers unexpected costs for customers—costs that can kill conversions when customers reach checkout.
Simon's solution involved careful product bundling and pricing strategies to stay within duty-free thresholds whilst maintaining profitability. "You've got to understand the regulations in each country you're shipping to," he advises. This isn't glamorous work, but it's essential for sustainable international growth.
Different markets demand different approaches. Simon discovered that product packaging and positioning require localisation beyond simple translation.
For the American market, BeGood adjusted product sizes and packaging to match local preferences. European customers expected different information on labels compared to UK requirements. Asian markets had their own regulatory frameworks requiring specific certifications.
"There's somebody out there in Indonesia who wants to take our brand on because they already distribute skincare products there," Simon shares. "They'll know what we need to do to get approval in the Indonesian skincare market, of which I know absolutely zero."
This pragmatic approach—partnering with local experts rather than attempting to become an expert in every market's regulations—accelerated BeGood's expansion whilst avoiding costly compliance mistakes.
Whilst many digitally-native brands focus exclusively on online channels, Simon recognised the value of physical retail presence.
Getting into Waitrose wasn't about connections or luck—it required proving BeGood's viability as a business. "We had to demonstrate that we had proper business structure, that we could handle the volume, that our products met their standards," Simon explains.
The retail relationship transformed BeGood's credibility. Suddenly, the brand that started at kitchen tables gained legitimacy through association with a respected national chain. This credibility carried over into online channels, where customers who discovered BeGood in stores sought out the website for repeat purchases.
But retail relationships come with challenges. Minimum order quantities, payment terms that can stretch 60-90 days, and the constant pressure to deliver consistent quality at scale all tested BeGood's operational capabilities.
In 2019, Simon decided to pursue equity crowdfunding—not primarily for the capital, but for something more valuable: brand advocates.
"I've now got 500 new salespeople, basically," Simon explains. "500 brand advocates who are interested in our brand succeeding."
The campaign raised £250,000 in one month, hitting its target within seven days. But the real value emerged afterwards. Investors began introducing BeGood to distribution opportunities in their markets. Someone running a skincare distribution company in Indonesia became an investor specifically because they saw partnership potential.
"They'll know what we need to do to get approval in the Indonesian skincare market," Simon notes. "We can talk to them."
The crowdfunding process demanded intensive work. About 300 of the 500 investors asked questions—financial questions, product questions, branding questions, and crucially for a natural products company, ethical questions about bee treatment and sustainability practices.
"You've got to be prepared to drop everything," Simon warns. "We had two people doing nothing else than responding and dealing with queries from customers."
One fascinating insight: despite being told that Facebook advertising wouldn't work for fundraising, Simon tested it anyway and generated £12,000 in investment for just a few hundred pounds in ad spend. "I don't think it would have worked for most brands," he admits, "but because we're skincare and because we're obviously very female-focused, we picked up on that vibe."
BeGood's technology journey reflects the maturing eCommerce landscape. Starting with WordPress and WooCommerce in 2008 made sense when options were limited and technical knowledge was required for any platform.
As the business grew, Simon recognised that platform choice matters less than consistent execution. "You just got to keep working at it and be very stubborn and just keep going," he emphasises.
The critical transition happened when BeGood moved from part-time hobby to full-time business. This shift required proper business structure, financial controls, and operational systems that simple WordPress setups couldn't support at scale.
When asked what advice he'd give his 2008 self, Simon's answer was immediate: "Stick at it."
"There are days at the beginning where you think, I've not sold anything today, nothing's gone out the door. But you just got to keep at it and you just got to keep working and believe in yourself and eventually things will turn around."
This persistence proved crucial during the critical transition period—that uncomfortable phase between part-time hobby and full-time commitment when self-doubt peaks and financial pressure mounts.
"You've just got to keep believing in yourself," Simon emphasises. "People will tell you it's never going to work. And you go, 'I'll prove you wrong. I'll sort it out.'"
Stubbornness—often portrayed as negative trait in childhood—becomes essential for entrepreneurial success. It's the quality that keeps founders moving forward when sensible people would quit.
Simon's journey offers practical insights for eCommerce businesses considering international growth:
Start with marketplaces before building separate sites. Amazon's Pan-European programme and similar marketplace tools let you test multiple markets without enormous infrastructure investment. Learn which markets respond to your products before committing to localised websites.
Understand tax and duty thresholds intimately. These aren't exciting topics, but getting them wrong destroys conversion rates and creates customer service nightmares. Research carefully, consult experts, and build these costs into your pricing strategy from the start.
Partner with local experts rather than becoming one yourself. You cannot master every market's regulations, cultural preferences, and distribution channels. Find partners who already operate successfully in target markets and leverage their expertise.
Use simple payment tools to open global markets. PayPal's "pay with PayPal" button opened worldwide markets for BeGood without complex integrations. Sometimes the simplest solution is the most effective.
View crowdfunding as brand-building, not just fundraising. The investors you gain become advocates, distributors, and advisors. Their networks and expertise often prove more valuable than their capital.
Test advice against your specific context. Simon was told Facebook advertising wouldn't work for crowdfunding. He tested it anyway and generated excellent ROI because his specific brand and audience made it viable. Trust expertise, but verify with your own experiments.
Simon's story isn't about overnight success or revolutionary tactics. It's about two people making lip balms from 18th-century recipes, selling them at local fetes, gradually building systems and capabilities, and refusing to quit when progress stalled.
From standing alone in fields with bees to managing international distribution across multiple continents, Simon built BeGood through stubborn persistence and pragmatic problem-solving. He learned tax regulations because he had to. He partnered with experts because he couldn't master everything himself. He raised crowdfunding because he recognised that brand advocates create more value than silent investors.
The transformation from kitchen table to worldwide wasn't about having all the answers—it was about figuring things out whilst continuing to move forward.
"You just got to keep at it," Simon advises. "Be very stubborn and just keep going."
That stubbornness, combined with willingness to learn and adapt, transformed a hobby into an international business. The same combination can work for anyone willing to start at their own kitchen table and keep going until they reach worldwide.
Read the complete, unedited conversation between Matt and Simon Cavill. This transcript provides the full context and details discussed in the episode.
Speaker A
00:00:00.240 - 00:00:00.480
Foreign.
Speaker B
00:00:08.000 - 00:00:19.200
Welcome to the Curiosity Podcast, a show about everything e commerce and digital business. The aim is simple, to help you thrive online. And now your host, Matt Edmondson.
Speaker C
00:00:24.400 - 00:01:56.700
Welcome my fellow e commerce entrepreneurs. My name is Matt Edmondson and this show is for those of us about e commerce and want to know how to get better at digital business.
That's what we want to know. And coming up in today's show I get to talk to the amazing Simon Cavill who's a beekeeper and expert in e commerce.
It's quite an extraordinary conversation and I'm going to put a link to Simon's website which he's going to talk about in the show notes along with a transcript from today's show and you can download that from the website. Also on my website is information about the Colab project. If you haven't heard of the Colab project yet, then do check it out.
I did cover it in episode one. I sort of introduced the concept in that episode and you'll be hearing a lot more about it.
It's a project I'm doing that involves the challenge of setting up 100 new E commerce websites.
And to do that I'm going to need to partner with some crazy entrepreneurs or maybe just Norma entrepreneurs who have got some fab products to sell online.
So if you want to know more about that, check it out also at my website, mattedmondson.com this show is sponsored by the amazing Curious Digital which is an experience based e commerce platform that I use to run and grow my own e commerce businesses.
Speaker D
00:01:56.700 - 00:01:57.100
That's right.
Speaker C
00:01:57.100 - 00:02:46.420
This is the platform that I use to drive my own multimillion dollar e commerce business. So if you're looking for a new platform, be sure to check it out at Curious Digital.
That's Curious with a K not a C. Because you know what, why would we spell it the normal way? Curious with a K and not a c@curious.digital. okay, so let me introduce to you today's guest. Right, today I am chatting with Simon Cavill.
Like I said, he's a beekeeper and more recently he's become a bit of an expert in E commerce and he's going to show with share with how his beekeeping hobby that started around 16 years ago has now turned into a fully fledged e commerce business called Be good. B E E good.
Speaker D
00:02:46.420 - 00:02:46.740
Right?
Speaker C
00:02:46.740 - 00:04:04.760
B double E good.
And like many things, the thing I like, I love about Simon's story that so many of us can identify with, he started at the kitchen table, he started making his own products which were Balms and hand creams from the bees, which he was just sort of keeping. But now he's got a load more products he distributes on the web. He's in a chain of stores called Waitrose here in the uk.
He's growing into Europe through Amazon and he's growing worldwide through PayPal Global, including the States and Australia and New Zealand and Taiwan and all these amazing places. And the really cool thing is he's going to talk about that in this conversation. That's right. He's going to go well into it.
We even talk, we nerd out a little bit on tax regulations when doing trade across international borders. So if you are thinking of exporting and working across international borders, you will definitely want to hear that part.
Plus, I asked Simon the question, how would he do it differently if he had to do it all? Again, this is such a great conversation. I really, really enjoyed it. And big shout out to Simon. Thanks again for taking the time to do this.
And without further ado, let's get into my conversation with Simon Cavill.
Speaker D
00:04:05.800 - 00:04:16.680
So, Simon, great to have you on the show. Why don't you start by telling us a little bit of who you are and sort of where you've come from, your story so far?
Speaker E
00:04:16.920 - 00:04:30.840
Yes. So I'm Simon Cavell and I've been a beekeeper for about 16 years now. And so we started Be good back in 2008 as a little hobby.
Speaker D
00:04:32.600 - 00:04:35.360
As most good businesses actually start. I have to be honest.
Speaker E
00:04:35.360 - 00:04:48.320
Yeah, it was just because I was technical. I did beekeeping. Really. I used to work in it and I did beekeeping as the sort of antidote to technology.
You can stand in a field with your bee suit on and just be.
Speaker A
00:04:48.320 - 00:04:49.520
Not prepared by anybody.
Speaker E
00:04:49.520 - 00:04:51.400
Nobody wants to come near you. Right.
Speaker A
00:04:53.320 - 00:04:54.800
You just talk to the bees, which.
Speaker E
00:04:54.800 - 00:05:26.360
Is great because they can't give away your secrets. That's fine. And so, yeah, I did that for a while. And obviously, as you're a beekeeper, obviously the whole point of it is you get honey.
So selling honey and you become known as a sort of the bee man in the village, because I live in a village in Hampshire and, you know, it's quite useful. You can barter honey for all sorts of things if you need to. So that's good fun.
And then I set up a website Fairly soon after 2008, not really to sell the honey, but just because I thought it'd be quite fun to build a website.
Speaker C
00:05:26.990 - 00:05:27.390
Okay.
Speaker E
00:05:28.190 - 00:05:43.950
Very rapidly after that, my wife started making lip balms and hand creams from the beeswax and the honey that we collected from the bees. We had some recipe books going back to the 1700s. So we started playing around with those.
Speaker D
00:05:44.350 - 00:05:44.830
Wow.
Speaker E
00:05:44.830 - 00:05:47.550
We left out the lead and we left out the ambergris.
Speaker D
00:05:50.590 - 00:05:51.590
That's probably a good thing.
Speaker E
00:05:51.590 - 00:06:08.010
Yeah, absolutely. But apart from that, they were.
They were fairly authentic and we went through them and tried them and then we sort of started selling them at local faith and fairs. And that's really why the website came up, because people were sort of asking us, could they buy online?
And at that point in 2008, E commerce was still fairly new.
Speaker A
00:06:08.330 - 00:06:08.810
Yeah.
Speaker E
00:06:09.690 - 00:06:37.620
So we built a little WordPress website and we used. I think it was WooCommerce at the time, and that worked okay.
And we sold stuff through there and then we just kept going to more and more fates and fairs and things like that. And we still have our little WordPress website. And it got to the point by 2013 where we.
We were either going to shows every day or I was going down to the post office every day with a big bag of boxes to distribute product.
Speaker D
00:06:37.940 - 00:06:38.340
Sure.
Speaker E
00:06:38.740 - 00:06:47.060
It was that point. We either did it properly or we just gave up because it was sort of taking over our lives. So I rashly decided to carry on.
Speaker A
00:06:47.220 - 00:06:49.780
And when I got some.
Speaker E
00:06:49.780 - 00:07:03.760
Some money from people I knew, some angels or tapped up people I need for money, and I did a presentation at a thing called Pitching for Management. Okay. Run by a lady called Morgana.
Speaker A
00:07:03.760 - 00:07:04.560
Rees Mogg.
Speaker E
00:07:04.960 - 00:07:44.870
Yeah, one of those Rees Moggs. And she's lovely, though. She's a nice one. And I did this pitch and two things happened.
The first thing, which is great, was every woman in the audience just sort of lasered light, you know, straight onto where I was standing and straight onto a. Listening to everything I was saying, because I wasn't talking about cloud this or technology that. Yeah. Other pitches.
And the second thing was that in afterwards, in the audience, I found out there's a guy who used to be the XMD of Revlon who went, well, actually, that's a really good. That's a really good thing. You should do that. But at that point, Begood was just a website.
It didn't really have proper business structure or anything like that. It was just us working.
Speaker A
00:07:45.990 - 00:07:48.670
So I sort of started talking to him and then getting into it, thinking.
Speaker E
00:07:48.670 - 00:07:59.490
Well, maybe we could do this properly then. At that time there was also a change in the law regarding cosmetics, where after that it became quite difficult to.
Speaker A
00:07:59.490 - 00:08:08.690
Be a sort of micro manufacturer stepping up because you had to have to register all the recipes and things like that, before 2000. At that point we thought, well, why.
Speaker E
00:08:08.690 - 00:08:09.330
Don'T we do it now?
Speaker A
00:08:09.330 - 00:08:16.050
So we actually jumped in and we then started talking around, went to various manufacturers, cosmetic manufacturers, to say.
Speaker E
00:08:18.310 - 00:08:24.070
You know, what they could do for us and how it might work. Because I had no knowledge of the cosmetics industry whatsoever.
Speaker A
00:08:24.230 - 00:08:26.710
Zero. Yeah, I just went to these people.
Speaker E
00:08:26.710 - 00:08:28.470
Went, I'd like to make some product, please.
Speaker A
00:08:28.870 - 00:08:30.230
How much would it cost me?
Speaker E
00:08:30.390 - 00:08:33.870
And it just, you know, eventually we found somebody we like working with who.
Speaker A
00:08:33.870 - 00:08:35.430
Wanted to sort of do things naturally.
Speaker E
00:08:35.990 - 00:08:38.030
And at that point I brought on.
Speaker A
00:08:38.030 - 00:08:41.590
A friend of mine, Glenn, who'd worked with me previously in a payment business that we set up.
Speaker E
00:08:42.070 - 00:08:44.270
And then I brought on two ladies.
Speaker A
00:08:44.270 - 00:08:53.660
Who used to work for a company called Lizelle. And there was the brand manager and one of the sales managers or sales director and they came and joined me.
Speaker E
00:08:53.660 - 00:08:57.060
And off we went. And within, within a few months we.
Speaker A
00:08:57.060 - 00:09:03.340
Had a listing with Waitrose and that was quite funny. We went into Waitrose and pitched to the Waitrose team. We didn't actually have any product.
Speaker E
00:09:03.420 - 00:09:07.100
We had, we had storyboards, we had pictures of artwork.
Speaker D
00:09:07.100 - 00:09:08.380
So you had pictures of your products?
Speaker A
00:09:08.540 - 00:09:12.650
We had pictures of the products and we had samples of the products, but.
Speaker E
00:09:12.650 - 00:09:18.170
We didn't actually have products in the packaging. So they just had to imagine what.
Speaker A
00:09:18.170 - 00:09:19.010
It might look like.
Speaker D
00:09:19.330 - 00:09:22.130
And did they know you didn't have products in the packaging?
Speaker A
00:09:22.290 - 00:09:23.610
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yes.
Speaker E
00:09:23.610 - 00:09:27.770
But I mean, I mean, you know, luckily they sort of believed in what we were doing and went, well, if.
Speaker A
00:09:27.770 - 00:09:29.810
You make this work, we'll take it.
Speaker D
00:09:30.770 - 00:09:42.610
So sorry, it's probably worth just pointing out actually, if you don't know, Waitrose is, is a supermarket chain here in the UK and it's quite a high end supermarket chain, isn't it? It's probably, yeah.
Speaker A
00:09:42.610 - 00:09:46.690
I suppose the nearest equivalent, US equivalent might be Whole Foods or Vans.
Speaker E
00:09:47.250 - 00:09:52.650
Okay, yeah, yeah, they've got about a hundred and well, we are, we are.
Speaker A
00:09:52.650 - 00:09:58.130
Shipping into about 130 stores at the moment. There's about 300 I think across the UK, but a lot of those are quite small.
Speaker E
00:09:58.450 - 00:10:00.130
Yeah, we, we go into all the.
Speaker A
00:10:00.130 - 00:10:02.050
Ones that just have a beauty sector section.
Speaker E
00:10:02.050 - 00:10:07.570
Section, sorry. And then subsequently from that we're now into Waitrose International.
Speaker A
00:10:07.890 - 00:10:12.680
So we are now shipping to the Middle east through Waitrose. So Waitrose take our product from the.
Speaker E
00:10:12.680 - 00:10:15.200
UK and sell it in Waitrose stores.
Speaker A
00:10:15.200 - 00:10:17.520
In Dubai and various other parts of the Middle East.
Speaker D
00:10:18.000 - 00:10:23.200
I imagine that's actually quite good, isn't it? Because the Middle east and English cosmetics tend to Tend to be good?
Speaker E
00:10:23.680 - 00:10:25.679
Sort of, yeah. You think so?
Speaker A
00:10:25.679 - 00:10:32.400
But we're not quite sure because it's very difficult to find the actual sales figures out of Waitrose International.
Speaker E
00:10:34.480 - 00:10:37.080
They're lovely, lovely people, but they're not.
Speaker A
00:10:37.080 - 00:10:40.480
The most efficient in terms of reporting. So sometimes you sort of not quite.
Speaker E
00:10:40.480 - 00:10:41.920
Sure what you've sold where.
Speaker D
00:10:42.320 - 00:10:42.720
Right.
Speaker E
00:10:43.840 - 00:10:45.960
We just, they keep placing orders on us every week.
Speaker A
00:10:45.960 - 00:10:47.680
So they order every week and we ship every week.
Speaker E
00:10:47.680 - 00:10:51.120
That's fine, that's wonderful. And so that obviously helps us.
Speaker D
00:10:51.520 - 00:10:54.720
Now, the reason all the products that you're shipping are still products that you're making.
Speaker E
00:10:55.120 - 00:11:00.960
Yes. So we've had, we've added a few and we've dropped a couple, but basically.
Speaker A
00:11:00.960 - 00:11:05.150
The core range is still there. But the critical thing is that from.
Speaker E
00:11:05.150 - 00:11:06.790
An E commerce point of view, when.
Speaker A
00:11:06.790 - 00:11:11.350
You'Re a new starter, particularly in something like cosmetics or skincare, where it's all.
Speaker E
00:11:11.350 - 00:11:16.310
About trust, if you're not on the high street, it's very difficult to get.
Speaker A
00:11:16.310 - 00:11:18.310
Customers to actually believe in your product.
Speaker E
00:11:19.270 - 00:11:20.950
Whereas if you say to an online.
Speaker A
00:11:20.950 - 00:11:24.110
Customer, it's in Waitrose, even if it's.
Speaker E
00:11:24.110 - 00:11:26.910
A Waitrose, even if they don't have a Waitrose within, I don't know, 20.
Speaker A
00:11:26.910 - 00:11:33.430
Miles of where they live, they'll still think, well, actually if they're in Waitrose, they must be quite good. So therefore that sort of trust goes up a notch.
Speaker D
00:11:33.880 - 00:11:37.880
That's really interesting. So the fact that you're in Waitrose gives you credibility.
Speaker E
00:11:38.680 - 00:11:40.960
Yes. The fact that it never bought from you.
Speaker A
00:11:40.960 - 00:11:41.400
Yeah.
Speaker E
00:11:41.560 - 00:11:56.040
The fact the customer can walk into a shop and go, there is on the shelf and maybe buy at Waitrose or maybe buy online, there's no difference in pricing generally, there's nothing at all. So we have to maintain the price across all our platforms.
Speaker C
00:11:58.840 - 00:12:02.760
Would you still do your E commerce website if you couldn't sell it into.
Speaker D
00:12:02.760 - 00:12:06.150
Waitrose, but you just don't think you'd sell as many if you did?
Speaker E
00:12:06.550 - 00:12:32.220
No, I think the whole sort of process would have sort of gone back a long way. It would not have worked nearly as well because you need that credibility. It depends on what you're into.
You know, if you're selling, I don't know, headphones or bits of electronics, then people will just buy whatever's cheapest. Whereas if it's something like a skincare product, which requires, as I say, some trust from the consumer, particularly from female.
Speaker A
00:12:32.220 - 00:12:34.100
Consumers who want to want the sort.
Speaker E
00:12:34.100 - 00:13:09.920
Of the knowledge behind the product, they're incredibly well versed, our customer base.
They know everything about products, what the ingredients are, they know what they do, they know what they don't want in terms of an ingredient, they're very hot on skincare.
You know, you can, if I tell somebody, oh, I make skincare products and I'm talking to a group of women, I'm instantly in a conversation for 20 minutes. Yeah. About their skincare regime, what they do, what they like, what they don't like, those sorts of things. Yeah, right.
But it's, it is an unusual situation when you're not in the, you know, when you come from outside the business.
Speaker A
00:13:09.920 - 00:13:11.360
To suddenly find that you're dealing with.
Speaker E
00:13:11.360 - 00:13:13.240
Very, very knowledgeable consumers.
Speaker D
00:13:13.480 - 00:13:21.480
I mean, that's really, it's an interesting statement about being in Waitrose and having this sort of dual outlet both in store and online.
Speaker A
00:13:22.120 - 00:13:22.600
Yeah.
Speaker D
00:13:22.840 - 00:13:33.130
If someone's listening and they're sort of, they're thinking, well, that sounds great, how do I go about doing that? What would be your top tip to someone that would look to do that?
Speaker E
00:13:33.690 - 00:14:36.260
If you go, you basically have to research the people you're going to work with.
So you have to understand how any retailer works in terms of the margins they want, which will typically be 60% plus, and you have to base your entire product development, product costing, on those margins. So you have to be able to make money selling a ten pound product for four pounds. Yeah.
If you can do that and we built that model from the very beginning, then that's fine. But if you can't, then you're not going to succeed in a retailer.
Also, depending on the retailer, you know, you may have to wait up to 140 days to be paid. So, you know, that's a long, that's quite a few months of.
So your cash flow is horrible and you'll probably be asked to do, to supply cash for various marketing campaigns which are mandatory. So a lot of retailers are difficult to deal with if you're very small. If you're big, then that's fine because you can use your leverage against them.
Speaker D
00:14:36.420 - 00:14:36.820
Sure.
Speaker E
00:14:37.140 - 00:15:10.680
Small, you have to do everything they say. And I know quite a few beauty brands who just don't make any money out of retailers.
You know, they just do it to hopefully promote themselves online so they can make money that way. We're quite lucky. Working with Wakedrazer has been very, very kind. Waketrails are a very nice organization to work with and they pay very rapidly.
So our cash flow is much more beneficial. Working through Waitrose, we don't have to contribute vast sums of money to mandatory marketing campaigns that we may or may not Want to do?
Speaker D
00:15:11.540 - 00:15:38.020
Well, I mean, that's fascinating because I mean a lot of people I talk to never think retail and digital. They just think digital. Do you know what I mean? It's one of those things that people don't think I should try and do both.
But actually what you're saying is certainly in high end products, doing both is a good way forward. It'll give you the credibility and it'll give you the extra exposure is a good word, isn't it, to new customers, which you wouldn't have seen before.
Speaker E
00:15:38.560 - 00:16:16.830
Yes, absolutely. I mean, depends on the product obviously. But from our point of view, it's essential because we have to build trust with the consumer.
That's very difficult online because all they can see is a screen. They can't really obviously physically touch and smell and not taste, but try out the products.
You know, you'll notice when a woman picks up a new product, the first thing she'll do a little skincare product is she'll smell it, she'll scent it and say what it smell like. She'll try the back of her hand and what does it feel like? So it's very tactile. So our industry is very, very tactile.
So if you can get samples into the customer's hands, as it were, or onto their faces, then that helps tremendously.
Speaker D
00:16:17.070 - 00:16:20.670
How do you do that online with your cosmetics?
Speaker E
00:16:20.990 - 00:17:01.090
I think the key thing, and this also relates back to Waitrose, is you have to build up a Persona for your brand. So it's very, relatively, very easy for us because honey has been used in skincare for thousands of years. I mean tens of thousands of years.
It's probably the second oldest skincare product after mud and they're extremely popular. And so it's building up that Persona around the brand. That's more than just the fact we make skincare.
Anybody can make skincare, but we do it with, from British bees, from, you know, we support other beekeepers because now we've gone beyond our own capability in terms of supply.
Speaker D
00:17:01.460 - 00:17:01.700
Sure.
Speaker E
00:17:02.340 - 00:17:04.900
We more bee farmers and we sponsor their apprentices.
Speaker D
00:17:05.620 - 00:17:29.709
And have you found. Because I mean one of the things I've noticed about your product is you, you have put on it a lot the this made in Britain, made by British bees.
It's a big deal. Do you think that's.
Do you do that because one, you're proud to be British or do you do it because actually notices this actually helps with the product, with the brand, connect with people?
Speaker E
00:17:29.949 - 00:17:34.509
Both. So we've recently been doing some sampling in America.
Speaker D
00:17:34.989 - 00:17:35.549
Okay.
Speaker E
00:17:36.349 - 00:17:47.869
In the Midwest.
And you would think initially you'd think, well, actually the American consumer probably prefers American products and certainly American skincare products because, you know they're made in America.
Speaker D
00:17:47.869 - 00:17:48.269
Sure.
Speaker E
00:17:48.349 - 00:18:38.580
But actually in our branding we found completely the opposite, which was quite surprising. Very surprising.
I mean, what turned out was that actually these consumers knew everything was going in those products in the American market and they didn't trust the ingredients and they didn't actually trust a lot of the standards of a lot of the companies because they felt that European standards, in terms of cosmetic ingredients and the quality and the fact that we don't have pesticide residue in our honey, unlike America, meant that our products were probably a safer than their own. Well, they knew more. They already knew that European safety standards are much stricter for consumers in all ways.
Not just skincare, but also food and things like that. So there is a natural trust of British products and the fact that we sort of like a sort of heritage.
Speaker A
00:18:38.580 - 00:18:41.300
Brand helps as well because we sort.
Speaker E
00:18:41.300 - 00:18:43.220
Of come across as quaint and very English.
Speaker D
00:18:43.700 - 00:18:51.860
Well, that's fantastic. I mean, it's great. I love to see the British flag on there. I was intrigued.
Speaker C
00:18:52.180 - 00:18:53.060
So you've.
Speaker D
00:18:53.610 - 00:19:02.490
You started doing testing in America and you mentioned before we started recording that you are going global, you're doing more stuff in the eu. How's that all going for you?
Speaker E
00:19:03.770 - 00:19:14.450
So that came partly by accident. We started shipping in Amazon in the UK three years ago and we just did it because we.
Speaker D
00:19:14.450 - 00:19:15.530
So do you sell on Amazon as.
Speaker E
00:19:15.530 - 00:20:48.460
Well or just so we have our own Amazon web store. If you go Amazon.co.uk begood you'll see our little Amazon website and that's quite interesting.
So we ship quite a lot of product through Amazon and it's probably Amazon Prime. Our average basket sell in the UK is about 35 pounds through our website and on Amazon it's about 15.
Because if you can see people are buying individual products and probably getting sort of overall purchase of stuff a bit like a grocery basket and getting all shipped to them by the time the next day. So it's a different audience. Yeah. And a different way of working.
And then through Amazon we started getting overseas sales from Amazon in parts of Europe and that started getting more and more and more. So we were sort of thinking about setting up.
So we've just started set up Amazon France, just translated everything across and then we started selling Amazon France and we've got plans to do the same in Germany, Italy and Spain. Then out of the blue, about a month ago, Amazon Came to us, rang me up and went, we've got this scheme where we'd like you to register for vat.
We're going to help you to register for VAT in seven European countries, including the uk, for free. And we'll pay for it. We'll pay for that also. We'll pay all the reporting for the first year.
Now, VAT in Europe is very complex because every time, some that do it monthly, some do it quarterly, the reporting.
Speaker A
00:20:48.460 - 00:20:49.300
Regimes are all different.
Speaker E
00:20:49.300 - 00:20:50.900
You've got to know the native language.
Speaker A
00:20:50.900 - 00:20:52.220
And all the other processes.
Speaker E
00:20:52.780 - 00:21:16.420
So that's typically why we have avoided trying to place product in the individual Amazon warehouses, because this is important. If you want to ship, I don't know, a product into Germany and you ship it from the uk, that's fine.
But if you want to ship a product from Amazon in Germany to that German customer, you have to be registered for VAT in Germany.
Speaker D
00:21:16.580 - 00:21:17.060
Yeah.
Speaker E
00:21:17.140 - 00:21:37.780
It's the same across all the countries in Europe.
And also, of course, if you're not in Germany, then that German customer can't use prime because there's no way it's going to come from the UK fast enough. So, again, with Amazon, it's very important to. They want you to have the product locally, so they came.
Speaker A
00:21:37.780 - 00:21:38.460
So we're now just.
Speaker E
00:21:38.460 - 00:21:48.400
I'm literally just filled in the forms to register ourselves in France, Italy, Germany, Spain, the Czech Republic and Poland.
Speaker D
00:21:48.800 - 00:21:49.280
Wow.
Speaker E
00:21:50.080 - 00:21:55.200
And so we'll have VAT registrations in those places and that means we can go into all the Amazon warehouses across Europe.
Speaker D
00:21:56.240 - 00:22:39.500
It's a really interesting service that Amazon have given you because I remember when we had to start registering across Europe for VAT because of the exports that we were doing. Like you say, it was, every VAT form was in the local language, which is fair.
I mean, it was, you know, it wasn't in Spanish and in English, it wasn't in German and in English. And so you had to understand that form and then you had to learn how to deal with that tax office. Like you say, it's not straightforward.
I don't think if you are in Britain and you are an E commerce website and you are thinking about exporting, you do need to get your head around this is pre Brexit, of course, but you do need to get your head around the different VAT structures in the different countries.
Speaker E
00:22:39.900 - 00:23:02.990
Yes.
And what can catch you out, which most people aren't aware of, is if you reach a certain limit where you ship a certain amount of value into that country, even if you're based in the UK and you're shipping, I don't know, let's say electronics or motor parts into somewhere like Germany or Spain or someone like that. If you hit a certain limit and it can be as low as €30,000, you automatically have to register for the deviator.
Speaker A
00:23:02.990 - 00:23:03.830
You have no choice.
Speaker D
00:23:03.990 - 00:23:06.950
Yeah, you do, yeah. It's a legal requirement, isn't it?
Speaker E
00:23:07.910 - 00:23:13.590
People out because they don't realize until afterwards and then suddenly the authorities come knocking on the door.
Speaker D
00:23:14.560 - 00:23:38.400
Yeah, it's a real strange one because part of the free trade across Europe, everybody's assumed that VAT was included in that. And actually the thing which I found across many E commerce businesses across Europe is the vat.
It's the VAT that catches them out across international borders with the European countries. And so you do.
Speaker C
00:23:39.200 - 00:23:40.320
It's a little bit like the uk.
Speaker D
00:23:40.320 - 00:24:17.570
In the UK you have a VAT threshold, don't you? So if you sell over a certain amount of value in products, you have to register for vat, which in England is sales tax or good sales tax, gst.
And if you. Each European country has their own limit that you have to register for.
And you are right, if you hit those limits of, you know, and you're selling goods into those countries, you then have to register for VAT and pay VAT in that country. And so not only do you have to fill out their tax forms, there are some countries across Europe where VAT is 25% compared to 20% here in the UK.
Speaker E
00:24:17.890 - 00:24:19.410
Yeah. And it's paid monthly.
Speaker D
00:24:19.730 - 00:24:23.330
Yeah. And so it can be a bit of a nightmare.
Speaker E
00:24:23.490 - 00:25:01.700
Yes. I mean, everybody from the outside thinks the EU is one human, you know, sort of homogenous thing. It's not. They're still individual countries.
They'll still want everything in their language. They'll still want done in their legal way.
So for Spanish vat, we actually have to go to the Spanish embassy in London as directors to identify ourselves with our passports to register for vat. You know, okay, that's different from Spain. The Germans are fairly straightforward but, you know, different countries do different things.
I've now got, I've got nine documents for Italy and only four for France, for example.
Speaker D
00:25:02.270 - 00:25:09.470
Wow, that sounds like an administration headache. I remember it and remember it well. Simon, I have to be honest, I don't want to go back there.
Speaker E
00:25:09.870 - 00:25:22.670
We're using an intermediate company. The base is going to manage that for us, but Amazon are paying for them for the first year. So, you know, it's around €10,000 worth of.
Worth of value or $10,000 worth of value, which is very nice. Thank you very much.
Speaker D
00:25:22.830 - 00:25:34.730
Yeah, like I say, it's a great service from Amazon. It's very, very clever. And so you mentioned that you were selling, you're doing some research out in the States. Do you sell out or you think?
Speaker E
00:25:34.890 - 00:26:26.880
Not really. We have customers who order through our website.
So we have a thing on our website called, again, we got approached by PayPal through something called PayPal Global Deal with Web Interpret. So on our website now, there's a little logo on the top bar, which is fairly recent, and you can select the country you happen to be in.
In fact, it does some, Some. Some auto analysis.
So if you come in from America, for example, it'll actually show our website in dollars and some of the spellings will change, particularly on the product pages and the checkout pages. And then if you're in, I don't know, somewhere in the Middle east, it'll come up in Arabic, and if you're in China, it'll come up in Berlin.
All automatic. And that does very well for us. So we have quite a few customers from the States who order through that service.
Speaker D
00:26:27.500 - 00:26:27.740
Right.
Speaker C
00:26:28.220 - 00:26:31.020
And so does it actually sell in.
Speaker D
00:26:31.100 - 00:26:41.260
Dollars to US customers, or is it. It's not a case of we'll show you a US dollar price, but we'll charge you sterling. Really?
And it'll be about that amount in US dollars that comes off your credit card.
Speaker E
00:26:41.340 - 00:27:09.000
No, they basically charge US dollars. And it's done. It all has to go through PayPal. So basically the customer has to pay through PayPal.
Yeah, but they pay through paper in their local currency. And it's roughly.
It's pretty much the same amount, but because they're working with some very large global courier companies, it sort of works out cheaper than we could do it.
Speaker C
00:27:09.240 - 00:27:09.720
Yeah.
Speaker E
00:27:09.880 - 00:27:18.960
The customer ordering from America, for example, will get their package tracked and all the rest of it in the normal way, but we just ship it to a place in London and then.
Speaker D
00:27:18.960 - 00:27:19.640
Oh, okay.
Speaker E
00:27:20.310 - 00:27:37.950
So from our point of view, it's great because we just ship next day to London, which is a standard price, a standard rate, and then from that point onwards it goes and sort of trundles off across the Atlantic to the American, to the Americas or wherever it has to go. And we've literally shipped everywhere from Australia, Taiwan, New Zealand, America, bits of.
Speaker A
00:27:37.950 - 00:27:39.270
Yeah, everywhere. Really?
Speaker D
00:27:39.510 - 00:27:41.350
Wow. And that's all through PayPal Global?
Speaker E
00:27:41.670 - 00:27:43.550
Yes. And you can sort of sign up.
Speaker A
00:27:43.550 - 00:27:46.060
For that on a website. And I think if they think you're.
Speaker E
00:27:46.060 - 00:27:47.740
Fairly professional, they'll just Set it up.
Speaker D
00:27:48.380 - 00:27:58.460
Yeah.
And it's a great option, I think, if you want to start shipping internationally and you don't know where to start or begin, like you say, you take advantage of their platform, don't you, really?
Speaker E
00:27:58.700 - 00:28:41.900
Yes. And this is a big help in terms of getting yourself out there and then as you start to develop.
So one of the reasons, for example, why we went to Amazon Germany was we saw a little hotspot of people buying from parts of Germany and Austria. So parts of southern Germany and parts of Austria we kept.
Basically, every now and again, we'd look at all these addresses and they would all be the same sort of around the same sort of city or couple of cities. Clearly it was people telling every. Telling their friends about our service and those little sort of hotspots developing in parts of Europe.
And that's when we sort of thought, well, actually we could do this through Amazon as well. And if we offer them Amazon, maybe they'd like that. So, you know, sometimes they buy direct and sometimes they'll go through Amazon.
Speaker D
00:28:42.380 - 00:29:03.100
Wow. Well, I mean, it's great that you get, you get in these international markets opening up and you're, you're expanding that way.
So I guess if I, if I go back to what you said earlier about 2013, you had to make a decision whether to do this properly or whether to not do it. I take it you're quite pleased that you made the decision to do it. It sounds like you're having fun.
Speaker E
00:29:03.100 - 00:29:23.970
It's a long, hard road. It's not an easy thing to do.
You know, it is be prepared for an enormous amount of hard work and heartache because, you know, as soon as you start succeeding, you know, the whole world, not necessarily the whole world comes to your door, but lots of people come to your door offering things that basically end up. You spend a great deal of money and not getting much back in return.
Speaker D
00:29:25.570 - 00:29:43.230
That's a really interesting statement. Yeah. The amount of phone calls you get every day from. From various different. How can I describe them?
Opportunities is quite interesting, isn't it, as yours. As your site sort of starts to gather pace.
Speaker A
00:29:43.470 - 00:29:43.950
Yes.
Speaker E
00:29:44.590 - 00:29:50.190
We know how to do social media and you just get bombarded constantly by these people.
Speaker D
00:29:50.350 - 00:29:55.430
Yeah, yeah, yeah. What are some of the things that you've done that you wish you. If you could go back, you wouldn't do.
Speaker E
00:29:55.430 - 00:30:24.730
Then I'd never approach agencies ever again. Web edges is. The bigger they are, the worse they are generally because.
Well, because you go into these places and they're all in, you know, Shoreditch or other hot spots of, you know, London, you know, looking really cool. And there are these warehouses.
And you look to yourself and you think, now I know I've got a friend who works in property and I know the sort of rental value of these sorts of places.
Speaker D
00:30:24.730 - 00:30:25.090
Sure.
Speaker E
00:30:25.800 - 00:30:29.880
So I'm thinking to myself as I walk in, okay, that's 100,000amonth just to be here.
Speaker D
00:30:30.200 - 00:30:32.200
Yeah. How much are they going to charge me?
Speaker E
00:30:32.840 - 00:31:23.830
And they're going to charge 30, 40, 50,000 a year each. That means they're going to want this much money.
And you think, and typically what happens is you meet the top people, you say, oh, they're great, they're really good. You know, they often know what they're talking about. And you get filtered down the organization.
You sort of tumble down from the top people down to sort of the person who only joined two weeks ago, who knows nothing but is learning on the job. And you're paying for them to learn, which really annoys me because after a while you get to know what you need to do.
And so you sort of know that these people aren't really talking the right language. And you think to yourself, do you know what you're talking about?
So now what we do is we sort of talk to other people, other websites, other people that we know, and we go off and we find individuals that basically know what they're talking about.
Speaker D
00:31:24.940 - 00:31:29.260
So you don't use agencies, you use individuals, sort of get recommended.
Speaker E
00:31:29.900 - 00:31:53.430
Yes. We have a person that works with us on Amazon, we have a person that works with us on Google, Google shopping and Google Ads and Google generally.
And we have another specialist who's actually amazing, just does Facebook ads, nothing else. Facebook and Instagram. And, you know, our Facebook lady is fantastic. And she gives us a sort of.
Speaker A
00:31:53.430 - 00:31:56.390
Four to one ratio, which is.
Speaker D
00:31:56.550 - 00:31:58.070
You take that all day long, right?
Speaker E
00:31:58.310 - 00:32:01.110
Absolutely. Every time I spend a pound with her, I get four back.
Speaker A
00:32:01.110 - 00:32:02.470
So, you know, why would I not?
Speaker E
00:32:04.470 - 00:32:38.160
And the point is, it's good value in the sense that I, you know, it started. And the way they do it is they do it properly. They just ramp you up very slowly.
And every, apart from, I think the first six to eight weeks, I think we've always been in profit. And that's the sort of, that's the sort of relationship we want.
We know we're giving money to these people and okay, they grow their teams, but they grow them organically and they bring these people on properly.
And you know that you're actually in effect, helping them earn a living and not Funding these giant sort of cushy warehouses for people who've got degrees that aren't really worth anything.
Speaker D
00:32:38.480 - 00:33:32.580
Yeah, I'm with you.
I remember, I remember one time I walked into a, an office with a client and we were doing some research around different companies and I took him into their office and the client I was with was extremely wealthy, I mean very wealthy client. And quite, I mean quite, I'm not going to mention his name but he's quite well known and he just, he did exactly the same thing, Simon.
We went to this office and he looked and around and he said to the guys, well this all looks very new. And they said oh yeah, it's great, we've just moved in here and these, let me show you our drawings and they bought out these drawings.
Let me show you our expansion plans and all this sort of stuff. And after about 10 minutes he just stood up and he said right, we need to go Matt. And they said, oh, why are you leaving early?
He just basically said if you need me to pay for all of this you are going to be charging way too much money. And I'm not interested. And he just walked out.
Speaker E
00:33:33.060 - 00:33:44.320
That's exactly the way we work. We've done all that. I've blown £60,000amonth on bloody agencies and not got anywhere and never again, you know, so we don't do that.
Speaker D
00:33:45.120 - 00:33:49.600
So are you quite self taught, Simon? Are you quite hands on yourself, are you?
Speaker E
00:33:49.920 - 00:33:54.640
I'm trying not to be because my job as an MD is to find everybody else that can replace me.
Speaker D
00:33:54.960 - 00:33:55.520
Yep.
Speaker E
00:33:55.680 - 00:34:11.820
What I do and just do it better than me. So you have to have this understanding and it's very simple.
I just want it to be profitable guys, you know, if I'm going to spend as I do on the Facebook lady, if I'm going to spend you know, a thousand pounds or ten thousand pounds or whatever it is with you, I want some more of that back.
Speaker D
00:34:12.300 - 00:34:12.780
Yeah.
Speaker E
00:34:13.340 - 00:34:26.700
This is the whole point about advertising guys. Is it supposed to generate income? It's not generating income, it's not advertising basically. I don't know, marketing or spending money.
And they were prepared to do some marketing but we're not prepared to do it forever for nothing.
Speaker D
00:34:26.940 - 00:34:28.380
Yeah, sure, sure.
Speaker E
00:34:28.860 - 00:34:35.540
So you know, we have a really good graphics lady who works from home. The other thing that we found which is absolutely brilliant is digital mums.
Speaker A
00:34:35.540 - 00:34:36.700
Have you heard of digital mums?
Speaker D
00:34:38.650 - 00:34:40.330
Why don't you explain what you mean by that?
Speaker E
00:34:40.650 - 00:36:21.830
So digital mums.
So the scenario is ladies that have, or not always ladies but people Basically who have had an experience in marketing, a formal training, you know, degrees or 20 years in the industry doing proper marketing.
Probably for well known brands who understand marketing inside and out, typically go and start families, have their families and then think at a certain point, well, actually I'd like to get back into the industry, but oh my goodness me, it's changed and now it's all about social media. And I know nothing about social media other than my own use of Facebook or Instagram.
So digital mums will take those individuals, they will basically check that they are who they say they are in terms of their qualifications and then they will take them on a proper course. A sort of homeworking upskilling in social media.
Okay, okay, you know about marketing, we're not going to tell you about market because you know what marketing is, but this is how you do marketing in the social media world. This is what you need to know. This is how Amazon works, this is how Google works, this is how Facebook works, is how Instagram works.
These are social media channels you need to think of if this customer is a, I don't know, a gym or a hairdresser versus somebody selling product or somebody.
So they have very, very good trainers who basically train these ladies through a typical ladies through a course lasting a few months and at the end of that course they're then allowed or integrated with a business. So we might, we approached them a couple of years ago and I think at that time, and I could be.
Speaker A
00:36:21.830 - 00:36:23.410
Wrong, it was about £300amonth.
Speaker E
00:36:25.160 - 00:36:31.160
And we spent £300amonth on this lady and she was, I mean she was amazing.
Speaker A
00:36:31.160 - 00:36:40.280
I meant something like 15 years inside Johnson and Johnson. Whilst she wasn't necessarily a skincare expert.
Speaker E
00:36:40.760 - 00:36:42.760
Number one, she was a skincare customer.
Speaker A
00:36:42.760 - 00:36:44.520
So she knew what the customer wanted.
Speaker D
00:36:44.520 - 00:36:46.440
Yeah, absolutely. Target audience, definitely.
Speaker A
00:36:46.520 - 00:37:02.740
Her expertise was marketing in a very similar field.
So she was an expert in marketing pharmaceuticals, which is not a million miles away from skincare in the sense that it's a very regulated organized in a very regulated business and you go through certain channels and you do certain things.
Speaker E
00:37:03.220 - 00:37:06.340
And so she was fantastic and we.
Speaker A
00:37:06.340 - 00:37:09.940
Worked with her until her husband got a posting somewhere overseas.
Speaker E
00:37:10.900 - 00:37:13.860
And now we have a lady working.
Speaker A
00:37:13.860 - 00:37:21.220
With us now and she's actually one of the digital mum tutors. So it's fantastic. We've gone from a graduate now into somebody who actually mum.
Speaker D
00:37:21.400 - 00:37:31.880
And so is this like a, I mean I've heard the phrase digital mums. We've employed digital mums mums but not through the service. Maybe that you're talking about. Is this like an online service?
Speaker A
00:37:32.040 - 00:37:49.890
Yes, it's an online service. So you can. You come at it from two angles.
You can either be somebody wanting to join the service to be deployed and get money, because 99% of these people work from home around their families and this may come in occasionally. So. So our mum, as it were, Rebecca.
Speaker E
00:37:49.890 - 00:37:54.610
She will come in once or twice a month and we'll just sit down.
Speaker A
00:37:54.610 - 00:37:59.170
And discuss things and then the rest of the time she's working from home and we'll sort of Skype or zoom.
Speaker E
00:37:59.170 - 00:38:00.970
Or whatever to keep in touch.
Speaker A
00:38:02.570 - 00:38:09.770
And the other approach is from companies wanting somebody to do marketing for them in the social world, but they don't have much money.
Speaker E
00:38:10.970 - 00:38:12.730
So you can get a digital mum.
Speaker A
00:38:12.730 - 00:38:23.850
Very cheaply and she learns with you. So as part of her course, she works with real companies doing real marketing and she or he is overseen by a sort of supervisor person.
Speaker D
00:38:23.930 - 00:38:26.210
Yeah, that sounds like a great idea.
Speaker A
00:38:26.210 - 00:38:37.210
And I think it's fantastic because gives small companies expertise at a very cost effective rate. And obviously if you like that person and if that person is getting back.
Speaker E
00:38:37.210 - 00:38:39.130
Into business or getting back into work.
Speaker A
00:38:39.550 - 00:38:41.550
There'S no reason why you can't end up employing them.
Speaker E
00:38:41.710 - 00:38:44.950
Sure. And they can become your marketing manager.
Speaker D
00:38:44.950 - 00:38:53.630
Or your marketing director and all that sort of stuff. Well, fantastic, Fantastic. Well, I'm gonna check it out. Just Google digital mums later and we'll find out.
Speaker E
00:38:55.310 - 00:39:08.320
Fantastic scheme because there's a huge wasted resource out there of people, you know, who've had careers in whatever field it might be, have families and they want to come back in again and then they feel they've lost their 10 years of that knowledge.
Speaker D
00:39:09.200 - 00:39:32.720
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I mean, we've, we've hired two new people in the last few weeks and both of which are mums returning back to the workplace.
And very dynamic, very, very capable, lovely people to be around, very determined, very stoic, just get on and solve problems. I mean, dream people to have around. I just have to be flexible.
Speaker E
00:39:33.290 - 00:39:47.930
Yes.
I mean, in a previous life, when I did my first startup, there were three of us, three geeks in a dining room in Bournemouth and our first employee was a lady called Rose. We had no idea how to interview anybody, but we thought that since she had six children, she could organize anything.
Speaker D
00:39:48.730 - 00:39:50.090
That's probably quite true.
Speaker E
00:39:50.890 - 00:40:13.670
She was fantastic.
So within two years she became our commercial director and we would have people ringing us up going, please don't let me deal with her because she's scary. But she knew how to get a deal and she was basically know she took no nonsense from anybody and it was just great working with her.
Luckily, because she was on our side. I don't know what would happen the other way, but that resource was really useful.
Speaker D
00:40:15.190 - 00:40:25.910
That's really funny, Simon. We. I guess a few more questions for you. One, you use the Shopify platform for your website, right?
Speaker E
00:40:26.390 - 00:40:31.430
Yeah, we moved into Shopify in 2013. Yeah, 2013, 14.
Speaker D
00:40:32.100 - 00:40:35.780
So this was when you decided to do this properly full time, you moved on to Shopify?
Speaker E
00:40:36.020 - 00:40:36.580
Yeah.
Speaker D
00:40:36.980 - 00:40:38.660
And you've stayed there ever since?
Speaker A
00:40:38.820 - 00:40:39.180
Yes.
Speaker E
00:40:39.180 - 00:41:35.160
So we're still on Shopify and it still works for us. We're still on the. On the sort of $79 a month thing, but obviously it's not more than $79 a month with all the various charges.
But yeah, works for us. I have to say it is absolutely bulletproof. I mean the amount of times it's ever gone down, I can count when five years.
I've got, I think twice in five years and it's been down for like two or three hours. And it came back again. I think they were attacked at one point with a big DDoS attack and they went down for a few hours but they came back again.
So it's very reliable from that point of view. It's very good because they've got a lot of tools inbuilt to the system which just lets you run the business and just get some machines.
I will say it's not easy to set up because what you don't realize is there's a lot of things, stuff you have to do behind the scenes in terms of things like the email content and integrating into various couriers and you know, the Royal Mail system or whatever courier you want to use.
Speaker D
00:41:36.200 - 00:41:38.920
Yeah, it's not a five minute job, is it? Set up a Shopify site.
Speaker E
00:41:39.080 - 00:42:03.350
I mean I did it myself the first time around.
Well, most of the times I've done it and yeah, it took all my skills to sort of work out and I ended up programming in HTML again, you know, going back, picking up the symbols, trying to work out what I needed to do because it's not that easy. But yeah, I mean it does. Literally it just, it just sits there and shunt us along quite happily every day.
Speaker D
00:42:03.590 - 00:42:10.950
If it's working well for you, great. I mean the design of your site, is that something you guys did? Is that a theme? How did you come across that?
Speaker E
00:42:11.750 - 00:42:23.050
So we.
Yeah, so like everybody else in the world, I think we use the turbo theme from out of the sandbox, which seems to be the Shopify theme at the moment, or has been for a.
Speaker A
00:42:23.050 - 00:42:23.850
Couple of years now.
Speaker E
00:42:24.090 - 00:42:30.810
And again, it's very stable and it gives us what we want to do. We're about to change the website. I think we're going to have a refresh.
Speaker D
00:42:33.450 - 00:42:35.370
But you're going to stay on Shopify. You're just going to change it.
Speaker E
00:42:36.730 - 00:42:57.630
We're going to turn the whole design on its head and basically start looking at it from mobile first, because now, about a year ago, we noticed that the mobile traffic was exceeding the desktop and obviously that means that we have to focus on mobile. And so we're going to start optimizing the site so that it actually loads as fast as possible.
Speaker D
00:42:58.030 - 00:43:03.230
So what would be one of the key things that you think you should change then, to make it more mobile friendly?
Speaker E
00:43:04.030 - 00:43:42.020
I think we are going to change the general, not so much the look and feel the website. We're going to reduce the amount of text on certain pages so that you just get to the point, particularly on the product pages.
And it's a careful balance because customers want to know everything there is about our product in terms of what the ingredients are, what it does and how it works. But at the same time, you've got to, you know, you've got to get to the heart of it and let the consumer make the decision very quickly.
I want to buy that because of course, there's two types of consumers, many types, but the two main types are people who've never seen your website before versus people who've come for the 10th time and just want to reorder something.
Speaker D
00:43:43.210 - 00:43:44.970
You've got to have a good balance between the two.
Speaker E
00:43:45.290 - 00:44:24.790
It's a big spectrum, isn't it, between somebody who's never heard of your brand before and wants to know everything about you, versus the person that just wants to come on and spend 10 seconds ordering something and then get the hell off and do something else. So trying to build a website that meets both is quite difficult.
You've got to be very economical with your words and your copy to try and get that point across and yet still let the customer by rapidly.
And so, you know, we do that regularly with, you know, when we send out emails to our customer base, we try and give them links to specific product pages and specific landing pages rather than just the website, which I think is the biggest mistake that people make.
Speaker D
00:44:25.590 - 00:44:28.070
Do you find it's okay building landing pages in Shopify?
Speaker E
00:44:29.990 - 00:44:42.620
No, it doesn't work very well. I find things like zap, zip pages Works quite well. We've used that in the past.
I really haven't found anything that really works the way I'd love it to.
Speaker A
00:44:43.500 - 00:44:45.900
Shogun, you know Shogun.
Speaker E
00:44:46.060 - 00:44:49.980
Yep, that too. We've probably used just about everything.
Speaker D
00:44:51.260 - 00:44:53.980
It sounds like you've tried every single thing that's out there at some point.
Speaker E
00:44:54.380 - 00:45:21.300
I was saying this earlier. There's a curve, there's like a bell curve that people go through when they get their Shopify website.
Think, yeah, I got a Shopify website and they get a few sales. Yeah, I got some sales. And then they think, I could make it better. Let's add this thing.
So they add a thing, you know, add an app to the website that does something and then they add another one. And then by, you know, a few months later, they've got like, you know, three dozen applications all running on the Shopify website.
And they wonder why it all just collapses in a heap of sort of molten slowness.
Speaker D
00:45:23.540 - 00:45:24.900
It sound like talking from experience.
Speaker A
00:45:25.140 - 00:45:26.100
Oh, I've been there.
Speaker E
00:45:27.620 - 00:46:00.400
And then even worse, you think, you know, these are rubbish. I'll get rid of all these. So you don't delete them all.
And then find the whole website now breaks because the code is still there, doing stuff that it shouldn't be doing because there's nothing left behind to actually link to. And then you've got to go through the code line by line, removing all the nonsense.
Or as we had to do in the end, just give up, go back to the standard theme and rebuild the website, start again. It's quite good in Shopify in the sense, you know, you can go back to another theme.
Speaker D
00:46:00.560 - 00:46:01.020
Yeah.
Speaker E
00:46:01.970 - 00:46:13.330
And go back to the vanilla site and set it all up again. And, you know, sometimes that's actually better than trying to repair the damage you've already done to yourself. So we're very strict now on apps.
Yeah.
Speaker D
00:46:14.050 - 00:46:29.130
I mean, that's fair enough.
I'm intrigued to talk to you about it, just simply because what tends to happen is people will use Shopify as a starter platform, so they start their site on Shopify. It's super easy. If you want to start a shop, an E commerce site, it's probably the easiest platform, I think, to do it on.
Speaker E
00:46:29.130 - 00:46:29.310
Right.
Speaker D
00:46:30.580 - 00:47:06.470
And you set up your website, you start to get a few sales, the few sales, turn to a few more sales and like you, you get to a place where you go, do I want to do this properly?
It's becoming a proper business around that point, which is typically, I'm going to say, probably quarter of a million to 300,000 in turnover for an average site. Right. Not every site, but just my experience is the point in which people go, I now want to move off the Shopify platform.
But you have said, actually no, I want to stay on the Shopify platform. I want to avoid the big web agencies. I'm quite happy with what we've got. We just need to tweak it and continue to develop it.
Speaker E
00:47:06.630 - 00:48:21.900
Yeah, I think the core of Shopify works very well. It does actually work and it's completely reliable. And if you want to, you can go up to Shopify plus, which is the big platform.
We don't see any to go there yet.
There's some quite nice things to have, but it's a big jump cost wise for us at the moment and we're quite happy where we are in terms of the core Shopify services. It's the peripherals that get you.
It's the fact that you've got to then bolt in an email system to do nice emails to your customers to encourage them to come back.
You've got to have a nice little thing that does invoicing properly and you've got to integrate into your accounting system and that can be an absolute nightmare. And then you've got stock control.
And the thing that absolutely foxes everybody, which they never think about when they begin with, is how do you manage returns? You know, when somebody wants to return something and you now need to reverse the process, that's. That's when your web, that's when your system dies.
Because then you suddenly realize, I have no process to do this. I don't know how to do it.
Yeah, I send this person a label, you know, because I haven't integrated the postal system properly or, you know, how do I manage it back in the inventory when I've got to put this thing back in stock or those sorts of things. So it's the peripheral around Shopify I find the most difficult.
Speaker D
00:48:22.720 - 00:48:31.920
And that's normally the point. I think as business grows and expand, people go, now I'm willing to move away from this to get all the customization that I want.
Speaker E
00:48:32.320 - 00:48:47.920
Yeah, I found that. Well, I found we were able to do everything we want to do on Shopify. You know, there are alternatives.
You know, I've previous life, I've built websites in Magento. Oh my God. You know, it's got better now.
Speaker D
00:48:48.640 - 00:48:49.960
No, no, it hasn't.
Speaker A
00:48:49.960 - 00:48:51.200
Developers nightmare.
Speaker D
00:48:51.520 - 00:49:09.340
Yeah, no, it's still the same now. It's fascinating actually. I was talking to a lady earlier on in New York. She's Going to be on the podcast soon, actually. She's lovely.
And she was talking about Magento and how it's just an unmitigated nightmare to do what they need to do on it. But there was no real alternative for him at the time. Yeah, fascinating.
Speaker E
00:49:10.300 - 00:50:11.640
We're a skincare business, not a web developer and so let's just get the thing working reliably and to the best of our abilities.
And you know, because we don't just sell on the web, you know, we work with retailers and we now start to expand internationally with distributors and other supermarkets and places like that. So we don't. Website is very, very important, but it's not the be all, end all.
I think you can focus too much on your website and just, you know, you should get to a point where it just works. It should be like a series of steps.
You basically run the thing level for a long period of time, nice and stable, everything works and then you plan to jump to the next level and you better plan properly so that when you do make that jump, you have a period of instability whilst you settle everything down and then you make sure it all runs properly for, you know, a year or two and then you jump again. You don't want to do continuous development on your website?
Speaker D
00:50:12.520 - 00:50:33.830
Well, I mean, I have to be honest with you, Simon, it's quite refreshing to hear your quite laid down to earth is probably the down to earth approach. And it's working well for you, which is great.
One final thing, I mean, you mentioned before we hit the record button, you actually went to crowdcube, didn't you, to get some funding for business.
Speaker E
00:50:34.950 - 00:51:59.550
We wanted to expand the business overseas and to do that we thought, well, let's do Crowdcube. We'd heard good things about it, or crowdfunding generally.
So we had a sort of quick review of the various groups that do crowdfunding, settled to work with Crowdcube and yeah, initially we thought we would raise a fairly small sum of money, which is just £100,000, just to see what it was like. Actually, I went into this not really going for the money as such. The money's great, but actually to sort of use it as a marketing opportunity.
And the result is spectacular. So we now have 500 new investors, brand advocates, and they're all over the world.
And when, I mean all over the world, I mean we have people in Peru, Indonesia, wow, America, obviously Canada, there's somebody in Iceland. You know, these are people who've put money into our business and not necessarily huge sums of Money.
But the point is, if I want to go into Iceland, as, you know, distribute into Iceland, there's a person, I can go to, that person and say, what do you think of our brand in Iceland? Do you think you would do? You know, I could ask them and it would be their interest to help me.
So then, you know, I've now got 500 new salespeople, basically, who are 500.
Speaker D
00:51:59.550 - 00:52:01.430
Brand advocates, is what you said, people.
Speaker E
00:52:01.430 - 00:52:10.230
Who are interested in our brand succeeding. Now, some have put a lot of money in there. Some have. But the point is, now go these new brand advocates and already a lot of.
Speaker A
00:52:10.230 - 00:52:10.990
Well, not a lot of.
Speaker E
00:52:10.990 - 00:52:28.790
Few of them are already distributing. So they're. They're quite clever.
They're people who already distribute product in different markets, who come back to you going, well, I've invested in your business, but actually I run this company, Indonesia, that does skincare distribution. I'd really like to work with you. So actually that's. That's very clever on their part.
Speaker A
00:52:28.790 - 00:52:30.350
And, you know, yeah, we'll talk to.
Speaker E
00:52:30.350 - 00:52:42.920
Them, you know, because they'll know what we need to do to get approval in the Indonesian skincare market, which. Of which I know, absolutely zero. But there's somebody out there that wants to take our brand on. Fine, you know, we can talk to them.
Speaker D
00:52:43.320 - 00:52:45.880
When did the. When did the crowdfunding end?
Speaker E
00:52:46.120 - 00:52:49.560
Well, you do it for a month, so we did it from mid March to mid April.
Speaker D
00:52:49.880 - 00:52:51.400
So it's just recently at the time.
Speaker E
00:52:52.280 - 00:53:45.180
So it's only a few weeks ago. So we hit our target in seven days. Wow. And it was just amazing just to watch this money just pouring in.
But it's hard work because, yes, you've got 500 people coming in, but about 300 of them ask questions. So you are constantly asking, sorry, answering questions from people, and they're asking all sorts of questions.
Financial questions, product questions, branding questions. Your ethics. In our market, our ethics are very important.
And so people were asking a great deal about, well, how do you treat the bees and what do you do with this and what do you do with that? And so you've got to be prepared to drop everything.
And have we had two people doing nothing else than responding and dealing with queries from customers?
Speaker D
00:53:45.580 - 00:53:50.140
And did you get a company to help you with your pitch and presentation or did you just do it all yourselves?
Speaker E
00:53:50.220 - 00:54:02.410
We did most of it ourselves. We had a consultant who had experience of doing this before. We were told it was quite interesting.
We were told, don't bother with Facebook advertising because it's not going to work for fundraising. Well, actually it worked really well.
Speaker D
00:54:03.850 - 00:54:06.730
So you were told, but you completely ignored that advice and just did it.
Speaker E
00:54:06.730 - 00:54:14.570
Anyway, we got about, I mean, we didn't get a vast amount, but we got about £12,000 through Facebook advertising. Very little, you know, for a few hundred.
Speaker D
00:54:15.770 - 00:54:17.290
It's still a good roi, right?
Speaker E
00:54:17.370 - 00:54:31.460
Absolutely. It was fantastic roi.
And again, I don't think it would have worked for most brands, but because we're skincare and because we're obviously very female focused and I think we picked up on that vibe and people just wanted to invest because we were nice to be's.
Speaker D
00:54:31.540 - 00:54:39.380
Well, Simon, listen, it's been fascinating talking to you, really appreciate your time. If I could finish maybe with one final question.
Speaker E
00:54:39.780 - 00:54:40.420
Yeah, sure.
Speaker D
00:54:40.420 - 00:54:51.460
It's 2019. If you could sort of do that magic thing, you know, where you go back to 2008 and it all starts.
What's the one piece of advice you'd give yourself, do you think?
Speaker E
00:54:52.180 - 00:55:22.480
I think stick at it. Because there are days at the beginning where you think, I've not sold anything today, nothing's gone out the door.
But you just got to keep at it and you just got to keep working and believe in yourself and eventually things will turn around and things will come to you.
But you've just got to keep working at it and be very stubborn and just keep going, you know, because there's that critical time where you go from working part time or having a full time job and doing this thing at night to. Than jumping into it full time. Yeah. And you just got to keep believing in yourself.
Speaker D
00:55:23.040 - 00:55:31.280
I like your phrase, you got to be stubborn. Stubbornness was always sold as a bad thing when you were a kid. But actually in this industry it's very good.
Speaker E
00:55:31.520 - 00:55:37.200
You just keep going because people will tell you it's never going to work. And you do. I'll prove you wrong. I'll sort it out.
Speaker D
00:55:39.120 - 00:55:53.050
Yeah, I've definitely been there. Listen, Simon, it's been great. Where can people connect with you? How can they get a hold of you?
Begood.co.uk and it's worth saying bee is spelled B E E E. Yes.
Speaker E
00:55:53.050 - 00:55:55.810
So it's all one word. Begood.co.uk.
Speaker D
00:55:56.210 - 00:55:56.930
Fantastic.
Speaker E
00:55:57.010 - 00:56:00.419
And we're on Amazon as Amazon.co.uk begood.
Speaker D
00:56:00.614 - 00:56:03.650
Okay. And that's just Amazon.co.uk at the moment.
Speaker E
00:56:04.050 - 00:56:07.010
Yeah, we're also in Amazon, France, Germany, Italy and Spain.
Speaker D
00:56:07.250 - 00:56:27.480
Oh, wow. Okay, well, fantastic.
So do get in touch with Simon and check out his beautiful website and why don't you buy his products because I am sure they will be absolutely amazing. Simon, listen, super appreciate your time. It's been great getting your wisdom and insight on e commerce. Thanks very much.
Speaker E
00:56:27.560 - 00:56:28.200
Thank you.
Speaker C
00:56:29.000 - 00:58:10.480
Wow, what a great conversation with Simon that was. I hope you enjoyed listening as much as I enjoyed having that conversation.
My shout out and thanks again to Simon for talking to us about what it takes to build a successful e commerce business from the ground up. I particularly appreciated his advice about being stubborn and not giving up despite the challenges.
You've got to be stubborn with it or some great advice. So thanks for listening to the Curiosity Podcast. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts.
It's free and the show is always full of good stuff about how to set up, run and grow your own e commerce business. So do make you should make sure you subscribe to keep up to date. Also, we can connect on social media if that's your thing.
You can connect with me on Instagram or Twitter or LinkedIn with a username mattedmondson or one word. Or if you're on Facebook then it's just add the co at the end Matt Edmondson co and you'll see me on there.
And of course all of the notes from today's episode with Simon. I'll link to his website. I'll do the transcript so you can download that and read that at your own convenience.
Links to Curious Digital about the COLAB Project.
It's all on my website, including all my social media links, so make sure you check that out@mattedmondson.com so thanks for listening my fellow e commerce entrepreneurs. I will be back super soon with some more help and advice on e commerce. So until next time.
Speaker B
00:58:14.560 - 00:58:23.760
You'Ve been listening to the Curiosity Podcast with Matt Edmondson. Subscribe and join us next time as we carry on conversations about all things e commerce and digital business.
Speaker E
00:58:23.850 - 00:58:24.090
Business.
Simon Cavill