Home Business Profile: Notonthehighstreet.com

Company name
Notonthehighstreet.com

Where are you based?
Barnes, London

What are your names?
Holly Tucker and Sophie Cornish are notonthehighstreet.com’s co-founders

What is your web and email address?
www.notonthehighstreet.com

And your phone number?
020 8878 5849

What does your company do?
Notonthehighstreet.com is a shopping site where you can choose from thousands of unique products by over 800 of Britain’s most original and talented small businesses and buy directly from all of them through a single online shopping basket.

When did you start it?
April 2006

What were you doing before you started your home business?
Holly Tucker and Sophie Cornish together have over 30 years of sales, marketing and on-line experience combined. Prior to setting up notonthehighstreet.com (which initially started from home) Holly was working at Conde Nast and Sophie was running her own wedding styling business.

What made you make the switch?
Realising that there were so many talented small businesses out there that needed a new innovative and cost effective way to sell their products. Nobody was supporting them in this way, so we just had to do it!

What made you think of this idea?
Holly Tucker had been in close contact for many years with small businesses while working on London Magazine where she headed up the sales department. She decided to support businesses beyond the printed page by initially setting up a series of shopping fairs in the UK, before realising that the internet was the way forward, and notonthehighstreet.com was born.

How many people work in the business?
16

What’s its annual income?
Total checkout and new business revenues for 2008 reached £2.5m, a 150% year on year growth

How did you finance the start up?
Initially it was funded by ourselves, using our savings and borrowings. We then raised venture capital money through a venture money company - NewMedia Spark, which was followed with further investment in 2008 by Venrex.

How do you market the business?
Extensive and ongoing Marketing and PR campaign throughout the year using a combination of new and traditional methods from Google adwords to producing an annual catalogue.

What is your customer base?
Mainly targeted at women; it is popular with ABC1 women looking for a refreshing change from the high street

What’s next? What plans do you have for the coming year?
We aim to continue supporting small businesses and trying to overcome the obstacles these businesses are faced with.

What tip would you pass on to other home business owners?
As a company that started from home but quickly grew and required more staff and office space don’t underestimate that if you hit on a good idea, have a sound business plan and the business takes off quickly you may need to review your set up too. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t incorporate homeworking as your business grows.

What’s your best/ most useful gadget?
Internet

Do you have any anecdotes about home working?
The usual joys of juggling family and working from home has had its moments, but since the beginning we’ve really never looked back!