Retail Week talks to Not On The High Street chief executive Leanne Rothwell on the challenges of running a pureplay business and being a disruptor in the gifting space.
Leanne Rothwell has been a part of Not On The High Street (NOTHS) since it was in “start-up mode” under its original founders Holly Tucker and Sophie Cornish. After what Rothwell describes as an “incredible journey” of 11 years at the brand, she took over the role of chief executive last September.
Since then the gifting specialist has gone through a rebrand to keep up with an evolving market and expand its reach to a younger audience all while simultaneously keeping up with tough macroeconomic conditions.
Rothwell talks about the headwinds facing ecommerce businesses in an increasingly multichannel environment, dealing with competition and entering into new markets.
With high streets booming post-pandemic, what are the challenges you are facing as an ecommerce business?
“Ecommerce has been challenged and there have been headwinds. But for us, it’s all about having the focus on what is in our control. I think the market can be turbulent, but we’ve got to look at what’s in our gift, what can we do to make sure that we’re driving the best experience and the best proposition for our customers?
“The market and the consumer mindset post-pandemic have entirely evolved. That’s exciting as it gives us different opportunities and challenges to solve. I think like so many other businesses right now, what we’re really trying to do is make sure that we continue to drive that loyalty of our existing customer base. Frequency retention is high on the agenda.
“Primarily, we’re known as a gifting site. And that was part of the rebrand that we did in September last year. What we’re having to do is just continually evolve on that and really think about how we can show up in ways that are relevant to customers and where they are right now. And how can we make sure that we’re leveraging the full extent of the range that we have?”
Who do you identify as your biggest competitor in the UK and what makes NOTHS stand out?
“It’s always a really interesting question in terms of competition because NOTHS itself is so unique in so many different ways. There are natural people you can look at, Etsy is the obvious example, in terms of another ecommerce marketplace. It is an incredible business. They’re doing some great things and we have a huge amount that we can learn from them. We also then have to look at the gifting side to people like John Lewis, Oliver Bonas and Next.
“But what we’re really focused on is how do we drive that differentiation point. And there’s a number of things behind that. First is that NOTHS works only with small creative businesses in Britain and Ireland. We’re very selective about the small businesses that we work with. That’s been part of our DNA since day one.
“In the last 12 months, over 7,000 small businesses applied to sell with us. And we’ve accepted around 5% of those. We’re truly hand-selecting and curating them and making sure that they are adding a point of difference to the range that we have or they’re genuinely filling a customer need.
“When I think about the product side of things and why a customer would choose us, we are the only place that truly brings together artisans, designers and curators in one place. They can coexist within our ecosystem very effortlessly. And I think that’s really important.”
Do you plan on entering the physical retail space or new markets in the future?
“We’ve had some pop-up stores in the past, I think they were really good learnings for us and really important as part of a brand awareness piece. Having said that we don’t have any plans in the near future to move into the physical space, I think we’re very much ecommerce pureplay. It’s where we should be. It’s our expertise.
“I think internationally is something that we’ve talked about a number of times. We went into Germany about eight years ago and took a great deal of learnings from that. It’s just not something that’s been on our radar.
“For us, it’s very much about doubling down on what it is that we know and what we’re good at. And looking at those adjacencies within the UK and Irish markets. There’s still so much headroom to be had within gifting. And from a lifestyle perspective, we’re really just getting started. So the focus is to take the learnings and start to drive that sustainable growth and then see what we can do.”
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