Online beauty firm predicts sales of £10m

AN ONLINE beauty business run by the son of retail entrepreneur Roy Gabbie is predicting a 66% increase in sales to £10m in 2011.

Beautybay.com is run by David Gabbie, who is the son of former Fads and Stationery Box owner Roy Gabbie. He is forecasting an increase in sales from £6m in 2010 to £10m this year following a recent redesign of the company’s website.

Gabbie started the company 12 years ago as Fragrancebay.com after leaving school and said that the initial idea was to sell perfumes at lower margins than high street stores.

The business initially struggled and an attempt to move onto the high street by opening a shop in Ashton-under-Lyne was hampered by a fire which drained trade away from the town.

Since rebranding the business as Beautybay.com in 2005. however, Gabbie Jr said that it has enjoyed year-on-year growth rates of around 80% and now achieves 100,000 weekly visits.

He said: “Over the last four years, the business has seen phenomenal growth in all areas including turnover, customer reach and brands stocked”.

The firm stocks around 7,500 product lines including the Mario Badescu skin care range and cosmetic brand Bare Escentuals. It recently moved from its base in Bury to a 40,000 sq ft warehouse in Trafford Park which is owned by his father. It also has an option for a further 60,000 sq ft of nearby overflow space if required.

“Hard work and knowledge of the consumer e-tail experience has lead us to where we want to be,” David Gabbie said.

He said that its recent growth has been partly due to a more canny use oif social media – it has 3,000 Twitter followers and 15,000 fans on Facebok – and the fact that much more of its demographic group of women in the 30-plus bracket are buying online than when he started the business.

Roy Gabbie was part of a consortium which bought the Fads chain in 2003 and then floated as Strategic Retail Group in 2003.

However, the business struggled during the recession and Gabbie completed a deal to buy 27 former Fads and Texstyle World stores from Strategic Retail’s administrators in a £1.5m deal in 2008.

He was unable to turn the business around, though, and it had shrunk to a chain of 16 stores by the time it was placed into administration last year.