From £3k to £80m: The Bootstrapped Must Have Ideas Growth Story with Amy Knight

Speaker A: The customer service team are empowered to do whatever they've got to do to keep the customer happy and we have great policies in place. But I think also having a customer service team that is in the UK that is part of the business that understands the products and can actually help our customers is also a big part of it and they're really accessible. We make it as easy as we possibly can to get in touch with us.

Speaker B: It's the E Commerce Master Plan podcast here to help you solve your marketing problems and grow your e commerce business. Cutting through the hype to bring you inspiration and advice from the e commerce sector and beyond. Here's your host, Chloe Thomas. Hello and welcome. It's great to have you here. Thank you for hitting play and choosing to listen to one of our inspiring guests. In this episode we are chatting with brand founder, uh, Amy all about her business that she and her team and her co founders have bootstrapped from, well, zero, obviously on track for 80 million in turnover this year. Really fascinating business. She's a very fascinating lady who takes us through a lot of different topics with some really clear advice around. Lots of them. There is lots to learn from this one. I know you're going to enjoy it and uh, make sure you listen to the end so you don't miss out on her top tips.

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Speaker B: And now to introduce our special guest. Amy Knight is the founder at Must have Ideas, a uh, UK based E commerce brand that sells problem solving household products. Must have Ideas is a boost Bootstrapped Business started with just £3,000 in 2018 and they are now on track for uh, an 80 million pound in sales in 2026 via their custom in house website. Hello, Amy.

Speaker A: Hi. Thanks for having me. It's great to be here.

Speaker B: Awesome to have you on the show. Huge congratulations on what you've achieved in what, eight years.

Speaker A: Thanks. Yeah, it's been busy just a little

Speaker B: bit I would imagine. How did you get started in E commerce though? Was it must have ideas or did something come before that?

Speaker A: So I had a bit of a kind of part time job whilst at university as we all do, and that very quickly turned into a full time job and not a lot of attendance at university. And by the time I graduated I was head of operations there and it was there that I met my co founders and um, that business had started to kind of dabble in advertising on what was then just Facebook. And um, we'd kind of seen that there was some green shoots there. It obviously felt like that's the way that things were going. So we all left that business started, must have ideas and we're product people, we love clever products. We love products that make life easier. So that's kind of where the product side of things came. And yeah, we started with our first product. We ordered, I think it was a thousand units of a silicon sponge. Threw up some ads and it all went from there.

Speaker B: So it was very much a cool product idea. Facebook ads and then um, it all

Speaker A: just grew from there. Yeah, we sold out of that first order really quickly and then it's just since then been building the product range but also expanding kind of traffic and revenue streams as well to bring more people to the website.

Speaker B: So what does the business look like now? How many SKUs are you now selling? Because I bet it's more than one.

Speaker A: We must be about 220 now, something like that. And we add six new products every month.

Speaker B: Oh, uh, cool. So you've got like a target of we must come up with these new ideas.

Speaker A: Yeah, well we try to.

Speaker B: Yeah. I would assume some months are easier than others.

Speaker A: Yeah, we've got quite a roadmap of things that we're really excited to launch. But obviously making all of that happen is a lot of work.

Speaker B: Yes, so much work. And what does the team look like now? Because presumably it's not just you and the co founders anymore, especially not if you're launching six products a week and running your own in house, full operations stack. So what does the team look like?

Speaker A: We actually tipped over the 200 in December. So we're just over 200 people now. And yeah, we do everything in house from marketing to dispatch customer services. Absolutely everything happens in this building.

Speaker B: Wow. I find often when someone's bootstrapping, they go for the outsourced fulfillment because there's the asset cost of building space and, um, machinery and all the rest of it. So why have you chosen to keep it all in house and deal with those big ticket items rather than having the flexibility of outsourcing?

Speaker A: I think aside from being a control freak and wanting to be able to control anything that's going on, that's to do with the business longer term, I think it's cheaper. You know, it is cheaper for us to store our own stock and dispatch our own orders rather than paying somebody else to do it. And it just means that we're in control of the service that we give. Like, we have such a focus on customer obsession and making sure that everything we're doing is, you know, right by the customer and providing the best service we can possibly provide. And we can't do that if we don't control it. And we obviously think we can just do it better than everybody else. From a marketing point of view, I'd rather pay the team in house to spend full time focusing on us and our products and really understanding the business rather than an agency that's going to spend a fraction of their time and not really get into the kind of weeds of the business and really understand the business and the product.

Speaker B: I suppose with that many products launching each month as well, you end up in a situation where you spend all your time briefing. Yes, briefing agencies, which doesn't really of a full time agency briefer, which doesn't really push things forwards. It's just kind of standing still in things. And you began with the very tried and tested back in the 2010s model of great product. Facebook ads shift a lot of units. But then you were talking then about the importance of customer experience and that side of things which suggests retention is now a big part of what you do. It's not just about right, let's flog a lot of the brand new shiny product and then we'll move on to the next product. So am I right in my assumption that because you're talking about customer experience, experience retention has become a big part of the game plan?

Speaker A: I think it has become a big part of it. And we do see a lot of customers coming back over and over again. And we've got our group of VIP customers that are back very regularly and I think that is, it is obviously important that they have a great experience so that they do come back and shop with us again. But I think it's also important from an acquisition point of view. The digital space is crowded and there are a lot of businesses doing very similar things. And from a product point of view, I don't think we're anything special. So we have to stand out in some way. And a big part of that is trust and people knowing that they're going to get a great experience. So having these great policies in place and them knowing that they've got 100 days to return something if they've just changed their mind and knowing that it's going to be delivered within two days and that our customer services are in the UK and they can phone us at midnight on a Sunday night and we're still going to pick up the phone. I think all of that sort of stuff is the kind of reason to buy from us and building that trust with, with a new customer as well as an existing one.

Speaker B: And is that your key to great customer experience is having those guarantees and those policies in place and then the team who back it up, or is that an obvious implication?

Speaker A: I think that's fair. I think the customer service team are empowered to do whatever they've got to do to keep the customer happy and we have great policies in place. But I think also having a customer service team that is in the UK that is part of the business, that understands the products and can actually help our customers is also a big part of it. And they're really accessible. We make it as easy as we possibly can to get in touch with us, which you could argue that somebody like Amazon is a big competitor for us. Speaking to a real person at Amazon is really challenging. So us providing something different is reassuring, particularly to some of our older customers as well.

Speaker B: I always assume that the poor Amazon people who you see at events just spend half their time going there was this package because they're like, I finally found a human being at Amazon. They kind of walk away from each networking event with a list of 20 orders to follow up on or something.

Speaker A: Yeah, a load of refunds they need to process.

Speaker B: Exactly. Because it is just. Without going off on a tangent, I find it fascinating that Amazon is renowned as being great at customer experience, but then there is no customer experience. That is their customer experience. But let's not go off down that tangent. I mentioned in the intro that you have your own custom built web platform.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Which is highly unusual in our, uh, world. Now what led you to decide to go down that route?

Speaker A: I think we'd had enough of being frustrated by software. And I think everybody that runs an E commerce business has a tech stack that they've had to try and squeeze their business into because it doesn't quite work for their business because it's built to work for a variety of businesses. And we wanted to build something that meant that it worked for us. It didn't frustrate the business. It actually enables the business we can grow quicker and better. Um, because we've got software that works with us rather than us having to kind of find workarounds with that. But also it saves us a lot of money. I mean, all of this software, especially when you get to scale, is incredibly expensive. So the cost of developers and bringing that in house and people, um, developing that software is less than paying for all of this software. So it makes sense kind of on both fronts.

Speaker B: You don't have that whole, oh God, we're going to need to buy another three seats. If we expand the customer service team, we've got to buy another three seats. And I suppose with your really solid, we're going to launch six new products a month. That to my mind, my system's brain starts going, well, that's going to begin within the software system. As the glint in the eye of the product idea comes out, that begins within the system and then as it develops, all the data's kept, everything's captured and it flows through the system system. Rather than there being a oh God, we've got to suddenly load everything into something two weeks before live or something. Has that been one of the benefits for you of building it yourselves?

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Because everything is within this system. It knows everything. So the customer service team have got full visibility on what's happened with this person's order and what's going on with that. They can see, somebody might have emailed, but they can see their previous whatsapps or phone calls or whatever because it's all within this system and the fulfillment is all within the system. And buying finance, all of the reporting from our kind of marketing efforts, I mean everything is within this. So it allows you to have from a reporting point of view and a kind of cohesiveness, everything being together. Whatever it is, it gives you a really round picture of what's going on in the business and you can see whatever you need to see because it's all there.

Speaker B: I find it interesting that two of the big themes in the world of E commerce, tech and success at the moment I suppose you could say all E commerce is the democratization of data so everyone in the team can see the data they need, which obviously underlying that is accurate data. And then the whole reduction of silos within the business so people actually start working together. But of course you've kind of already solved all of that with everybody in the same building and working off the same data system. You know, it's not like someone's pulling up their marketing system and going, well, it says this and then the merchandising system is saying it says this. And you've immediately got them not trusting each other because they're both looking at different data and thinking it's right. That must have a subtle but highly impactful impact on the business.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we talk about Spark is our one source of truth. Yeah, there are other sources of truth as well. But for our final decision making and our final. This is our number, it's spark. So when we're looking at different revenue streams, and particularly as we start to bring more revenue streams on board, and as we all know, that makes attribution and everything far more murky and challenging, having that data set that this is what we go by massively helps. And everybody's on board and everybody's talking about the same thing and working towards the same thing as well, rather than working towards different metrics reported by different systems.

Speaker B: You mentioned there are different acquisition channels and I would assume you're no longer purely Meta disciples. You've gone wider than that. Are you willing to share which are your kind of exciting or which any acquisition challenges you're particularly excited about or disappointed by even at the moment?

Speaker A: I mean, Meta is still obviously a huge channel for us. I mean it is just huge. Um, I think some of our more exciting ones, we've, um, been doing a bit more traditional marketing, I suppose you could call it. More recently we've got a TV shopping channel and also with direct response advertising as well. And that's been very interesting and is becoming particularly the TV ads on other people's channels has been showing a lot of promise and is, you know, becoming a really significant part of the business. But also looking at kind of other digital channels as well, like TikTok and Google, um, and things as well, and the potential there. But a lot of them are still fairly early days. But yeah, they are growing in significance. Um, initially we were incredibly reliant on Meta ads, but that isn't the case so much anymore.

Speaker B: I guess having the marketing team in house makes. Let's give TikTok a go. An awful lot easier than if you've got, you know, you've already got the production happening in house, you already know how to do that, you know, the nuts and bolts of it all. And we mentioned right up front that your business is a bootstrapped business. You have resisted the urge to go after the cash and the nightmare which it seems to be when you go after the cash. I'm sure many of our audience are. Well, given the current economic climate, they either chose to be bootstrapped or they found themselves becoming bootstrapped as the VCs have left the industry. What's your advice to someone going down that road? Because you and your co founders have clearly done it very successfully over the last eight years, navigating some fairly impressive challenges in our industry during that time. So are there any kind of key guiding lights or any key lessons you've learned that you'd like to share?

Speaker A: I think it sounds like a really obvious one, but just being super focused on cash flow. I mean, we have since day one, Met Weekly, and it is a detailed cash flow in the weeds, like really understanding what's coming into the business, what's going out of the business. We've got a superstar finance director, which obviously always, always helps when you've got somebody that's, uh, doing a good job of looking after the money. But I think it's just being really cautious. We obviously are in a place now where we don't have to be quite so cautious as we did at the beginning. But I mean, we literally used to sit down and discuss, you know, five pound budget increase on our, uh, Facebook ad campaign. Because, you know, when you, when you first start out and you haven't got a lot of money, that all of that matters and it all compounds. So, yeah, it's just being all over it. It's having a million different heads on and just really understanding the cash.

Speaker B: I think it's interesting you say we don't have to be quite as diligent about it as we used to be because we're bigger and, um, there's less risk. But then the line items get bigger, don't they? Yeah, that's true.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: It's like the annual budget for coffee, for the kitchen is a lot larger now than it was when there was only three of you. And you mentioned there about the importance of having a great cfo, a great finance director. And from Mike, back many moons ago, when I worked brand side, the finance director was like the lord of all, you know, such an important person in the business for controlling the cash flow. And I don't think it gets talked about often enough. What are the key things one should look for when one is looking to add, uh, a finance director to a retail team. Do you think?

Speaker A: I mean, a big thing for me on all recruitment, finance or otherwise, is a personality fit. I just think as long as the attitude's there, obviously they've got to be a capable finance person and a capable finance director. But I think it's also just about the fit into the team. Somebody that understands where you're going, understands the goals, understands the ambition. But is also the safe pair of hands going, is that really a good idea or should we wait a little bit longer to do that? But ultimately rolls with the kind of, we're quite an entrepreneurial business and you know, our finance director is very much a part of that and kind of rolls with the ambition and the ideas and helps us to make it happen.

Speaker B: I love that you talk about the culture and the personality fit because, you know, you could imagine like a brilliant whatever coming into the team and being like, well, no, I do Facebook ads, I can't do TikTok ads. It's like, no, that's just not going to work here. So what's got you excited about what's coming up with the business in the near to medium term future?

Speaker A: Well, we're about to move into a bigger building which is consuming a lot of our time at the moment. And with that comes some really exciting changes. So things like automating some of our fulfillment operation and just having more space allows us to kind of obviously grow more and bring in more people. We've got plans to do bigger things on TikTok, on Google and a bit more with things like organic social as well, which we don't really do a lot of at the moment, as well as things like WhatsApp and we've got a lot of plans for different revenue streams. And the 2026 plan is also to finally go out for the UK and tackle another territory.

Speaker B: Wow. So a full business relocation, A, uh, changing of the warehousing to automate it. I think you mentioned at least four new marketing channels and we're just gonna go overseas.

Speaker A: Yeah, we like to be busy.

Speaker B: Clearly. Clearly. Going back to, I think one of the most exciting, but I suspect some people would think one of the dullest bits, the office move. How did you decide how big to go? It's like, you know, you're in your current office and it's slightly holding you back because there's Only so much space for stock, products, fulfillment, team members. But then you don't want to build the space you're going to need in 20 years time because you'll be paying too much that you should be than now. But you also don't want to have to move again in a year's time. So how did you go about working out how big to go?

Speaker A: It is a very difficult one because you just don't know what you're going to need. And we're in the slightly weird situation, I suppose, in that our uh, warehouse and office space is all kind of under one roof, which a lot of businesses aren't. And we need a kind of disproportionate amount of office space to warehouse space than most businesses and they just don't really exist. We had a real challenge. There's not a lot of units out there, so a lot of it was also dictated by kind of what was on the market. But yeah, we've kind of tried to go for something that will maybe last us three or four years, which is how long we've been in this building. But we're just desperate to be out. Like there's no car parking, there's no toilets, there's no desks, there's not enough space for anything. So yeah, um, it's very exciting. But um, yeah, I agree with you. I think it's one of the most exciting things. There's a lot going on.

Speaker B: It always makes a big shift in stuff, doesn't it? When you move location, suddenly the brain space changes. Yeah, it's going to be exciting. And then the overseas plans. Why have you waited until now to go global?

Speaker A: I think there's been a bit of. We didn't kind of feel like we were done in the uk. Not that we feel like that now, but I think sometimes, I don't know, sometimes I look at brands and they're like, I'm going to go and crack America. And I'm like, well you've barely started in the uk, like get one thing right before kind of moving on to the next thing. And I think we wanted to make sure that the UK was obviously at a, ah, good scale, doing well and very stable. We actually did a pilot in the US ages ago now, just before COVID and that went well, showed kind of green shoots and then Covid happened. We struggled to get stock. You know, we were juggling the team coming down with COVID and not being able to dispatch orders. There was a lot going on and we decided that actually that was not the time to focus our efforts on the UK and then we've just kind of never really gone back really. Trump probably hasn't helped with that, but yeah, we've just never really got round to doing it again. So yeah, it feels like now's the time. You know, we will do 80 million at the end of this financial year and yeah, we're in a good place to kind of roll that out into the us. We've got the team in place and the bandwidth to do that.

Speaker B: E Commerce Master Plan is supported by some of the greatest companies in the E commerce sector. Here's a reminder of who they are.

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Speaker D: Grainger knows when you're a procurement manager for an office park, uh, you're not managing one building, you're managing all of them. And to stay ahead, you need to see through walls and around corners. Lights about to fail, filters ready to clog H vac on its last leg. If you wait until something breaks, you're already behind. Count on Grainger for quality products, easy reordering and AH24,7 support. Call 1-800-GRAINGER click grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.

Speaker B: It's time for the Top Tips round. Okay, I love this section because it gives me and our listeners some really quick ideas for taking our businesses to the next level. So Amy, are you ready for the top tips?

Speaker A: I am indeed.

Speaker B: Okay, the book Top Tip. If everyone listening to this podcast agreed to take Friday off and read a book to make their business better, which book would you recommend?

Speaker A: So not really a business book, but a book that I think everybody should read because I think it applies to everything. The let them theory. I just loved it. As somebody that sometimes overthinks like I have been applying it in business and just in everyday life and I think it is invaluable to just let people be and do their thing and not let it bother you and focus on what you're doing and what you're building.

Speaker B: Oh I Think you're the first person to recommend that, which is kind of mad, really. So thank you for. Yeah, thank you for getting that one on our list. The traffic top tip. Which marketing method do you either prize above all others or think doesn't get the press it deserves?

Speaker A: I mean, Meta is our most important channel for sure, as I'm sure it is for a lot of E commerce businesses. I think it probably gets the recognition it deserves, but it is the most

Speaker B: important one for us, I suspect will remain so for some time given, uh, given how they're developing.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Okay. The tool top tip may be a collaboration tool, a social media plugin, a phone app, or just a way of working. Is there a cool little tool you use that makes you and your team more efficient from day to day?

Speaker A: We are very big on the whole Microsoft Suite, but particularly planner and to do the two kind of link together. But I insist that everybody in this business has a to do list and then planner for project sharing and all being able to collaborate on that. The business basically runs on planner.

Speaker B: Very cool. Carbon top tip then. What's your favorite way to reduce the carbon footprint of an E commerce store?

Speaker A: I think for us we're just doing what you can, whether it's, you know, reducing packaging or looking at how you get rid of wastes or how you go about just operating. We've just changed our vans from petrol vans to electric vans, just kind of making little changes to do what you can.

Speaker B: It's a great place to start and a great place to continue because there's always something new as the technology evolves. So no, Great answer. Thank you, Amy. Now, before we say goodbye, could you please let the listeners know where they can find you and your business on the web and social media?

Speaker A: Yep. So we are musthaveideas, uh.co.uk or musthave ideas UK on all the social platforms.

Speaker B: Easy as that, everyone. Amy, thank you so much for coming on the show. It's been really fascinating finding out more about your business. So thank you so much for being so generous in sharing with us.

Speaker A: Thanks for having me.

Speaker B: What phenomenal growth. And I think the thing which strikes me is how clear Amy's focus is on what they're doing, why they're doing it, and some of those really big ticket things they've worked on, like building the tech stack in house, keeping all the team in the same, building serious focus behind that business. You can tell why they're so successful just listening to her. Uh, plus some interesting bits around the cross border. The growth how to get beyond Facebook ads and more in there I might have to listen to. I suspect many of you will have to listen to that one twice to get all the bits out of it. You can get your hands on our notes from this episode, including those top tips and links to what we've mentioned by heading over to ecommercemasterplan.com you can also use our Direct episode short links. Just put ecmp.info the number of this episode into the URL bar and you will be redirected straight to the right page. When you get to the website, why not join our email list? We'd love you to. If you liked this episode, then check out episode 459 where we're talking to another bootstrapping founder about how they did it. This time it's Ryan Alovis from Lens Direct in the us and if you want more on homewares businesses and that sort of products, then go to ecmp.info home to find all that stuff on the website. Thank you so much for tuning in to this and every episode of the Ecommerce Master Plan Podcast. I bring you a new interview every week because I want to inspire and help e commerce business owners to succeed and thrive with their businesses, including progressing along that path to net zero. So if you know someone this show can help, please tell them to listen to the E Commerce Master Plan Podcast. I hope you have a brilliant week and don't forget to keep optimizing. Thank you for listening to the E Commerce Master Plan Podcast. Find out more@ecommercemasterplan.com podcast.

Speaker C: Pros Save more on what you need to get the job done right Right now at Lowe's, get 15% off select custom entry and interior doors plus save $80 on the DeWalt 20 volt max 2 tool combo kit, now just $169. And at the Lowes Pro Desk bring us your materials list and get a quote in minutes. Handwritten, a photo or even a sticky note is all you need. Keep your jobs moving faster and on budget at lows valid through 78 while supplies last selection varies by location.