Analysis: Retail's new entrepreneurs - three businesses taking the industry by storm

What do an eBay trader who made it big in the furniture world, a sister-act linen business less than a year old and a meat producer who turned down Tesco and never looked back have in common?

More than you might think.

Whether well on the way to the top or striving just to keep a spark of an idea alive, there is one thing that unites all retail entrepreneurs: at one point they decided to stop thinking about what might be and did something about it.

But as sisters Molly Freshwater and Harriet Meers have found in their first year of trading, once a start is made it’s a sudden and very steep learning curve.

Between selling linen to family and friends to going live with a website that turned over £75,000 in its first eight months, there were more complications than they ever imagined.

Or take Jason Bannister, who never even planned to be a retailer but when he did it was all stations go.

Working a full-time job before he went home and staying up until the early hours trading online wasn’t exactly his idea of fun, but he quickly realised that without that kind of single-mindedness, Oak Furniture Land wouldn’t get started at all.

So with the Collect+ Retail Week Enterprise Awards just around the corner, we take a look at three retail businesses at different stages in their journey to find out how they are faring and what their owners have learnt so far.

When Jason Bannister took a punt and bought some Mexican pine online and sold it on eBay, he had no idea it was the first step towards owning a national chain of retail stores with a turnover of £180m.

So how did one lead to the other? Bannister used the online auction site from the start, and found a healthy market for both materials and finished products. But that didn’t mean it was easy. At the time he had a full-time job, so any progress made on his budding eBay empire was done after work, usually into the small hours.

He recalls: “In the early part of 2004 it felt like I was working 25-hour days. I was working late at night and early in the morning before I went to my job.”

It was around that time that Bannister took a big leap forward by visiting India in search of suppliers and manufacturers. The trip was an eye-opener and perhaps the turning point for the fledgling business.

He says: “I would work with the manufacturers sketching designs, leave them at six or seven in the evening and, when I came back the following morning they had made the samples. In a week I would return with 40 or 50 new pieces of furniture, and they were exclusive designs.”

Getting physical

By the end of 2005 and a turbulent two years as a trader – by that point he had quit his day job – Bannister was turning over £2m a year. But it wasn’t for another two years and thanks to a lot of persuasion from friends and family that he decided to take the next step – and Oak Furniture Land was tentatively born as an etailer.

But any apprehension was quickly eased when, on the first day of trading, Oak Furniture Land matched the sales figure for the eBay business that was still running in parallel.

“You’ve got to work 24 hours a day… nobody’s going to do it for you”

Jason Bannister, Oak Furniture Land

It was a landmark for Bannister, who started seeing the potential of where the business could go. “We’d learnt a lot,” he says.

By the time he opened his first showroom in Cheltenham, the business was turning over £30m. It was with both scepticism and optimism that Bannister took the leap into physical retailing.

What he saw as being purely an opportunity to showcase the products turned into a chain that today numbers 54 stores and is expanding at the rate of one a month.

While Bannister insists on playing it down, it’s a remarkable story. So what’s the secret? “You’ve got to work 24 hours a day,” he says. “If you don’t do that you’re not going to get anywhere, nobody’s going to do it for you.

“It’s really easy to get sidetracked. People don’t always have the concentration on one idea, especially these days. You have to focus on one thing – in a few years you can branch out.”

Anyone who’s ever set out with trepidation into the unforgiving world of business will remember fondly, or in a sweat, the ride that Molly Freshwater and Harriet Meers have started on.

Still in the first year of running their own bed linen etail business, the sister-act is in the thick of it. From sourcing supplies to repairing products, designing PR campaigns to unloading lorries, it’s not for the faint-hearted.

The concept is simple: to offer luxury bedding at reasonable prices, passing on the savings they make from being purely online to their customers.

A spark of inspiration in March last year led to a soft launch to family and friends and, by Christmas, Secret Linen Store was up and running.

At that point the sisters, who both had backgrounds in retailing, started pushing the products out to the wider world via a number of channels, from old-fashioned word of mouth to pay-per-click advertising, PR and marketing.

Since then it’s been all stations go. Freshwater says: “There are new challenges every day, and the scale of them varies dramatically. It is just the two of us and one part-time member of staff, so challenges vary from a button coming off to making a plan for the next three years. We are unloading lorries one minute, building sets for a photoshoot the next, and then chatting to a customer about which duvet cover will go best with her curtain colour.”

The business appointed former boss of beds retailer Feather & Black, Adam Black, as chairman, and has attracted investors including ex-Asos director Jon Kamaluddin.

A family affair

Like many budding businesses, Secret Linen is based on close connections and personal links. Freshwater says that although they are making big efforts to expand the business online, they like to maintain the family feel of their earliest days.

She says: “Being sisters and mums, we can engage with our clients and share our knowledge. We have some great plans for content-led marketing, but we are also growing a reputation for amazing service. Nothing is too much trouble for us and we believe this goes a long way in spreading the word.”

“It’s a roller coaster, so make sure you’re ready for ups and downs”

Molly Freshwater, Secret Linen

And while far-flung suppliers can become remote links in a vast chain for giant retailers, Freshwater and Meers are still very much in contact with their factories. “The people who make our bedding are as much a part of our business as we are,” says Freshwater. “The factories are the most important part –without them you would have nothing to sell and no business. You need to make sure you have a solid and reliable source for your product.”

It’s early days, but with around 2,000 hits on their website a week and 1,000 orders placed in eight months, they have managed to build up lots of interest already. And with ambitious plans to become a major destination for linens in the UK and even overseas, they are prepared for a lot of hard graft. The sisters are under no illusions about how difficult it’s going to be, and eight months down the line they already have advice for new entrepreneurs.

“It’s a roller coaster, so make sure you are ready for ups and downs and hard work,” says Freshwater. “You must have a plan and try to stick to it, which can be hard, and everything will cost more than you think. You need to be thick-skinned but also open-minded.  There are lots of opinions to deal with, some of which you won’t like.”

When you’re out on your own, nobody makes the decisions for you. There’s a lot of pressure on business owners to make their way in the world but the reward, as Miranda and Roland Ballard have discovered, is freedom to define their own strategy.

After several years of expansion in which they had gradually outsourced much of their production, a pivotal moment came in July last year when the Ballards decided to risk it all by turning down a contract with Tesco in order to stay true to their roots.

Turning point

Their business, Muddy Boots, has been on quite a journey from its early days of selling meat products at farmers’ markets. The meat, which came from Roland’s family’s farm, was immediately recognised for its quality, and within two years the couple had secured contracts with Ocado and Waitrose. But with success came a new kind of pressure, which Miranda admits they weren’t prepared for.

She says: “We didn’t appreciate the challenge of taking quality meat production to a larger scale, both in the struggle to make any margin and to maintain an ambitiously high-quality meat range. We outsourced at the wrong time and became very blinkered with supermarket growth. The turning point was the compliment of being offered a Tesco contract.”

From there they resolved to take back control of everything, from production to distribution. And in April this year they took another big decision: to become retailers. They make products in the kitchen in the back of their store in Crouch End, north London, both for their own business and for Ocado and Waitrose. As proof of its success, Muddy Boots counts property tycoon Nick Leslau and ex-Baugur chief Jon Asgeir Johannesson as investors.

There was a time when the Ballards were forced to make a fundamental decision about what type of business they wanted to run. Now they are making the sort of day-to-day decisions that any retail entrepreneur will recognise, about how to turn their fledgling business into something really special that will be a hit with shoppers.

“My advice is to focus on shopper experience as much as the product”

Miranda Ballard, Muddy Boots

Since opening the store they have added a wine bar to the space and serve wine and charcuterie until 10pm. They now plan to expand to as many as 10 stores in the next six years. Miranda says: “The biggest goal is to make the space work and to generate enough revenue and margin to start opening more stores as soon as possible and have a chain of modern meat shops. We don’t want there to be a waking hour nor a square foot that we’re not utilising.”

Customer focus

It has been a steep learning curve for the suppliers-turned-retailers. With another shop due early next year, the couple aren’t daunted and are exploring all ways to innovate and connect with their growing customer base. But, above all, they are comfortable with the path they chose.

Miranda says: “We’ll also be launching click-and-collect through our website. We’ve started doing courses on some evenings, and we have a whole list of things we can’t wait to try out.

“That’s the biggest joy of having our own shop – that we get to try something immediately and get an answer about whether it’s worth pursuing.

“It’s a process that takes an understandably but cripplingly long time when you’re supplying supermarkets, and that really stifles innovation.”

So what have the Ballards learnt in five very eventful years? Miranda says: “My advice would be to focus on shopper experience as much as the product. That’s what small businesses can do better than the big boys. If you’re ambitious, find backers to help fund that, as well as keep that ambition alive.

“It’s hard to get up after every punch, but keep saying your big plans out loud so that you just have to keep going.”