Celebrating a year online

This afternoon I held a celebratory drinks for a team of people, both inside and outside of our Company, who’ve helped us achieve a great first full 12 months of a new online e-commerce business. 

Of course, in accordance with the times, it had to be a virtual drinks held over Zoom. The clink of the champagne glasses off the TV screens and laptops isn’t quite the same as the real deal! 

Nevertheless, the moment needed to be celebrated. 

12 months ago today we went live with our first e-commerce business, not knowing whether it would be worth it or not. 

Not knowing whether it would upset or frustrate our existing distributors and customers. 

Not really knowing whether it was worth the effort it took to get it set up and going in the first place. 

The beauty, with the wonderful benefit of hindsight, was that we had very little else to do this time 12 months ago. 

Our core business was effectively on hold as construction sites were working out whether they were allowed to be open and operational or not. 

Our core customer group - builders merchants - were closed one minute and then open the next, with the uncertainty of whether they were allowed to stay open or not. 

With the “go to work, but don’t go to work” and “stay at home, but don’t stay at home and go to work if you can’t work from home” confusion we were all faced with, if we dared to turn on the news for some guidance. 

Given the situation and the need to keep any orders coming in that we could, we thought we may as well see if we can sell some compost bins and water butts online ourselves. It was always part of our longer-term plan anyway, so why not take advantage of the situation and use the opportunity right now? 

So we did. We got started. 

It didn’t cost much. It didn’t even actually take that much time. Within 3-4 weeks we went from a simple idea to a live website ready to take orders. And take orders it soon did...

The main thing I’m left reflecting on this evening, is that I always tell people I don’t really like team games. I’m more of an individual sports kind of guy and never really feel 100% comfortable in a team game. I even wrote an article about this in the most recent edition of our monthly newsletter Water Matters. 

The ironic thing is though, that I really enjoyed assembling our team today to celebrate our achievement over the past 12 months. And boy was it a team game!

It included Michael & Jonny from Digital Gearbox, who have done a fantastic job with our Google Ads campaigns. Spending money with them is an absolute joy when you know what ROAS you’re going to get in return! 

Also Elliott & Charlie who run our Facebook Ads and have had a massive impact on our reach since we started working with them in January this year. They’ve really helped to increase our profile and raise awareness of our brand. 

Mark & Laurence and the team at Technique Web have been pivotal to it all right from the start, and way before then, having built the website and then been available at the drop of a hat, to implement changes and improvements whenever we’ve collectively had a good idea or moment of inspiration! 

Mieke Gadd, who has been helping promote our brand and share our best efforts on socials over the past 4 months. As well as helping add a layer of organisational structure that was missing before and much needed. 

I get a lot of support and guidance from Damian Smyth who helps me with every bit of our business during our weekly conversations. As I shared with the team earlier, most of our good ideas come from Damian (even if I accidentally take the credit for them!) and if I do ever come up with a good idea myself, I then talk to Damian about it and he makes it at least twice as good by adding to it or improving it! 

Over the past year we’ve also got so many great ideas and strategies from Nigel Botterill and the team at the Entrepreneurs Circle. They have excelled during the pandemic and really stepped up their level of value provided to member businesses. Whether it’s tools like ResponseiQ to help answer customers’ questions quickly, or Hotjar to see what web visitors are clicking on and looking at on the website, so you really know what’s working and what isn’t, it’s all extremely useful and all brand new stuff we didn’t know about before. 

So that’s 9 people mentioned already, and that’s before I’ve even started naming the people in our own direct team of staff who have been instrumental in making this new part of our business a success over the past year. 

With people involved in sales, marketing, order-processing, stock ordering, operational order-fulfilment and logistics, and of course finance, we’ve relied on so many people in each of our departments to make this work. They’ve all been fundamental to the success we’ve achieved. 

As anyone who has ever started an online business will know, getting the orders is actually the easiest bit (to a large extent), but keeping up with the processing, fulfilment and customer service of those orders is the key and once you get busy, it’s the challenge. That’s where the time is spent to really make the customer experience a good one. One that’s going to get you repeat business. One that’s going to get you referrals. One that’s going to get you decent reviews (we’ve had over 200 now with an average rating of 4.4 out of 5 over the past few months - so not bad for a start!). 

It takes a big team. A team of people who know their stuff. A team of people specialising in their area of expertise, but all working together to get the most out of what each person is doing. Making sure one’s actions compliment another’s. Helping each other to make it as good as it can be. Pushing each other to continue to raise the bar. 

We concluded our celebration with a sweepstake on what’s possible in year 2 and we’ve got some ambitious numbers on the cards. Such is the confidence and drive of all of our team members, both internal and external, who know and believe in what we’re capable of. It’s going to be an exciting second 12 months! 

Thinking back to a year ago today, when we got started on day one, I’m reminded of something I read on Monday this week... 

Nigel Botterill reminded me that there's a great line right at the start of the film 'Apollo 13' when Tom Hanks’ character, Jim Lovell, is sat with his wife in his garden in Florida, looking up at the moon on the night Neil Armstrong had first set foot on there...

"It happened because we just decided to go..." he says.

And isn’t that the truth with so many things? 

Why were we able to celebrate a successful first 12 months with this online business today?...

Because 12 months ago, we just decided to go. 

To get started. To make it work. To build something new. 

We decided to go. And we’re grateful that we did. 

Is there something that you’re on the fence about at the moment? Not sure what to do? Uncertain of what it will bring? 

Well, do what they did in Apollo 13 and what we did 12 months ago today, just decide to go. You’ll be thankful you did.