Record turnover projected at BeautyBay
Celebrating its 12th birthday this month, online beauty products retailer BeautyBay. com is forecasting record turnover for 2011 of £10 million. The Manchester-based firm has seen year-on-year growth of almost 80 percent thanks to a recent redesign of its website, investment in larger offices and warehouse space and adoption of new online technologies and innovations. The profitable business had sales of £6 million last year and is “cash rich and debt- free”, says founder and managing director David Gabbie. But it’s not always been plain sailing, “originally trading as Fragrancebay. com, the idea behind the site was to provide a popular repurchase product at a cost lower than traditional bricks and mortar stores,” says Gabbie. “The internet was all about value in those days and we struggled. In fact, turnover in the first 6 months was just £30,000,” he adds. In 2004, Gabbie opened an outlet in a
shopping centre in Ashton-under-Lyne but the centre suffered a fire just before the store opened. As a result of this disastrous foray into retail, in 2005, the business rebranded as
BeautyBay.com and was refocused online.
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brand or product desired, and slideshows. As well as an overall enhancement to the usability of the site, the new design helped improve organic SEO too. The next step, says Gabbie, is making more technological advancements, the biggest of which is a new website platform. Gabbie says the business has a huge wish list of what it would like implemented on the new site and has narrowed the search to a few suppliers. However, he’s not ruled out building the site in-house yet. Once the new platform is in place,
BeautyBay will start to increase its international activity. Although it already ships worldwide and has a multicurrency website catering for transactions in US dollars, euros, Danish kroner, Norwegian kroner, and Swedish kronor, Gabbie says
Last year, BeautyBay moved from Bury to
larger premises in Trafford Park, Manchester, investing in 40,000 sq-ft of warehousing and office space and 60,000 sq-ft of overflow space dedicated to growth in the next few years. Also in 2010, the company redesigned its
website with a cleaner look and feel, mega menus to help customers navigate to the exact
local-language websites are planned to take full advantage of new markets. “Why would a French or Italian customer buy from a website in English?” he says. “If you’re going to enter a new market, you have to adapt.” International sales currently account for less than 20 percent of turnover, but have great potential for growth, says Gabbie.
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