success stories More Success Stories... Easy Bathrooms planned early in


Lockdown to prepare to open its 50th store in Dereham, Norfolk, the moment restrictions were liſted – and fulfil plans to open an additional nine showrooms before the end of the year. Their growth trajectory comes at a time


Karen Hilton, Haycar


CAR DEALERS SEE SPIKE Interest in cars grew, even though many dealerships closed and cars couldn’t be test-driven, with the market in used models remaining particularly strong. The fledgling dealership heycar saw


website traffic spike by 35 per cent week-on-week as early as April. Reactive measures on the company site


were put in place to keep a pipeline of customers for the future, including a ‘register interest’ button on all makes and models, allowing them and the relevant dealership to keep in touch until the time became right to buy. Chief Commercial Officer Karen


Hilton, said: “It’s so interesting to look at the numbers of people coming on to the site. The visitors, the cars they’re browsing and the numbers who are registering interest suggested a pent-up desire to buy when the time’s right.”


Mat Bird, The Shirt Society Craig Waddington, Easy Bathrooms


LIFE IS SUITE FOR BATHROOM RETAILER A Leeds-based retailer became the fastest-growing bathroom brand in the UK, having reached a turnover figure of £33 million in seven years.


www.smeweb.com


SHIRT SHOP SEES A VENT IN THE MARKET The Shirt Society was set up in Manchester offering them online on a rolling monthly subscription, backed by a six-figure investment from a leading regional investor. Founder Mat Bird launched the


platform in June, ahead of a full launch in September. He insists that while producing good quality shirts and delivering them to customers’ doors is the ultimate aim, he sees it as “fundamentally, a technology business”. “We recognise the importance of


when many other physical and online bathroom brands were struggling with some going into administration. Craig Waddington, who founded the company in 2012, said: “I am humbled and extremely proud. We have solid foundations which will help us to assist the UK’s economic recovery, and we’ll keep moving forward.” Easy Bathrooms offers its own-brand


‘affordable luxury’ products, such as bathroom furniture, designer radiators, walk-in showers, freestanding baths and mirrors. It also sells an extensive range of tiles for all rooms of the home, with options including interior design-led ranges such as large-format, wood-effect and marble-effect.


Food for thought


Veggie option proves viable


Mitch’s Kitchen, an online shop delivering healthy frozen meals added veg boxes to its menu in March and saw an immediate 208 per cent sales increase compared to the previous year. “That’s something we could have never imagined to come out of such an awful time,“ said co-founder Mitch Lee, from Fareham, Hants. “The key takeaway for us has been to connect with our customers on a personal level.”


Oven-ready subcriptions


Demand for home baking products since lockdown has been “overwhelming”, according to Joseph Munns, founder of Bakedin in Basingstoke. The business has also enjoyed a 10-fold uplift in daily sign-ups for its monthly subscriptions. “We’ve had to put in lot of social distance measures in the factory, which has effectively cut our maximum output in half. But given everything that is going on, I feel fortunate in that we’ve managed to take on more staff at this stage instead of furloughing anyone,” he said.


Fast food, quick returns


Mr Lee’s, a healthy noodles-in-a-cup brand, quickly hit its £1.75 million funding target, boosting its profile as families look for healthy alternatives during lockdown. It took its total on investment platform Seedrs to £6.5 million, attracting 220 investors from its customer base. It was also a personal high for Damien Lee, a seasoned entrepreneur who was forced to bounce-back from illness. In 2014 he was diagnosed with stage four chest and stomach cancer and given weeks to live.


Melt proves it’s the big cheese


Mechelle Clark, founder of Aberdeen’s first grilled cheese shop and restaurant, Melt Aberdeen, adapted her business to offer a delivery service to meet demand for home baking – and began producing home-baking videos and kits to keep people entertained. “As things quietened down, we continued to add new strings to our bow,” she said. “By posting my baking pictures on the business’ social media, we’ve also seen a demand for ‘how-to’ videos so are now looking into ‘Bake @ Home’ kits for our brownies.”


SME magazine 15


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