E-commerce: How Better Bathrooms tapped online demand

BETTER Bathrooms’ turnover will have grown 25% to £40m this year – a far cry from when it was run from the founder’s home.

The Wigan company, which now employs 200 staff and last year secured a £10m investment for 30% equity from the Business Growth Fund, started out as an eBay shop.

Founder Colin Stevens’ first foray into retail was 12 years ago – selling online as an eBay trader.

He recalls: “I was selling all sorts: golf equipment, clothing – whatever
I could get my hands on. Things were selling really well on the golf side but my supplier ran out and that ran its course.”

At the suggestion of his mother Mr Stevens started selling taps: “I was the only person selling taps then – now there are hundreds but also the audience has grown,” he says.

Better Bathrooms’ growth story is featured on TheBusinessDesk.com’s 18-page Online Retail supplement, produced in association with Baker Tilly and digital agency I-COM. Click here to download it for free. 

After a few months demand was such that he decided he needed his own
website to sit alongside the eBay shop and Mr Stevens built his own. It had pictures and prices but no shopping cart.

Six months later, having invested £3,000 for a better site which included a shopping cart, he was selling five to 10 sets of taps a day and doing all the order fulfilment himself.

In 2005, Mr Stevens opened his first store in Wigan, under some railway arches and took on his first member of staff.

While he’s opened new stores,  the company’s web presence has not been forgotten – sales are split 50/50 between the two channels and Mr Stevens recognises the importance of continued investment in online.

He has recently spent £250,000 in changing his website platform to Magento to make it more secure and says the website is constantly evolving.

“People think once you’ve built a website it is done but you actually spend more money tweaking and changing things – we look at it every day and change things.

“I expect to have to invest that amount every year, having an online business is not a cheap option – you need an in-house team.”

He’s not forgotten his roots either and continues to trade on eBay through bathrooms2buy, which offers a different product range to Better Bathrooms.

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