Building a 7-Figure Business on Connection Not Commodities

Matt Edmundson (00:04)
Well, hello and welcome to the Ecommerce podcast. My name is Matt Edmundson and it is great to be with you today talking about all things e-commerce. Yeah, we've got a great conversation lined up today. No pressure on our guests, but I'm expecting really, really great things to come out of this. So grab your notebooks, grab your pens, because you are not going to want to miss this one as we're to get into all kinds of stuff.

But before I introduce today's guest, let me give a quick shout out to anybody that is new to the show. A big warm welcome to you. It's great you're with us. Great to have you join us. ⁓ Like most e-commerce people, I look at numbers and I look at stats and it thrills my heart to say the least when I see the download numbers going up and the engagement metrics going up every week on the podcast. So thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for

⁓ being with us and making this show what it is. ⁓ honestly, it's just great fun doing it. I get to talk to some amazing people like Lou, who are we going to talk to today? And you guys keep listening to it and keep writing in telling me it's great. So I really, really appreciate it. It is great to have you with us. If you haven't done so already, check out the website, ecommercepodcast.net, where we'll have the notes from today's show. All that sort of stuff will be on this brand new website.

So, you know, you're all in the website business. Go and find the errors and tell me where they are, please. Be my user testers. That would be amazing. But yeah, go check it out. Ecommercepodcast.net. you're there, sign up to the newsletter if you haven't done so already. The new format is being delivered and there's some great stuff in that newsletter, even if I do say so myself. Extra stuff that's not in the show. So do go and check that out. And whilst you're there, of course, check out the cohorts.

Lou (01:30)
Thank you.

Matt Edmundson (01:54)
⁓ the cohorts great. It's where e-commerce entrepreneurs get together. In fact, we've got a cohort call tomorrow with one of the groups, which is great. It's just a free sort of community that we all join. all chat about e-commerce. We're all in the WhatsApp answering questions, ⁓ that we all have about e-commerce and just peer to peer learning, which is great. So if you're, know, if you've got a pulse and you're in e-commerce, come check it out. You might quite enjoy it. That's also featured on the website, e-commerce podcast.net.

Enough of the self promotion, Matthew, let's crack on with the show, shall we? ⁓ Right, let's talk to Louise, Louise Doyle. Welcome to the show. It's great to have you all the way from sunny Northern Ireland, I believe.

Lou (02:35)
That's right. Thank you very much. Lovely to be here, Matt.

Matt Edmundson (02:38)
Now you don't sound like you're from Northern Ireland, do you?

Lou (02:42)
Absolutely right, but my husband makes up for both of us.

Matt Edmundson (02:45)
That's

brilliant. Well, that's that was fair play. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's a beautiful part of the world, isn't it?

Lou (02:54)
absolutely gorgeous. are right in between Belfast and Dublin in the countryside and right in the south far mile on the very port.

Matt Edmundson (03:02)
Nice, nice. Very good. So, Lou, listen, tell us a little bit about Needy and what you guys do and how, let's just start there and then we'll see where this conversation goes.

Lou (03:15)
Brilliant, absolutely. So, Needy, we are a corporate gifting concierge service that uses psychology and AI to match the perfect gifts to your recipient. So we do that by asking some questions and our research and knowledge. We work with some of, I was going say the UK, but I'd say some of the world's leading financial tech companies, logistics, like large organisations.

And we do everything from their new starter gifts to wellbeing gifts to Christmas gifts, obviously is a big one that we've been thinking about since August. And pretty much everything in between, including branded merchandise. But the really cool thing that we do is we support local, small and independent businesses. So when they're putting in an order for, you know, 10,000 gifts for all of their employees.

Matt Edmundson (03:50)
Mm-hmm.

Lou (04:11)
We're making sure that it's the amazing smaller local independent businesses that get the products and get the orders.

Matt Edmundson (04:13)
Mm.

Fantastic. Right. I love the corporate gifting concierge service. Anything you can fit the word concierge into is a bit of a winner, I feel. So congratulations on that. Now I was reading through the notes, Lou, and your story is a little bit unusual. It says here, I think the phrase you use is it's slightly backwards journey. Tell us about that.

Lou (04:26)
Thanks

So I suppose it's backwards in the fact that we of course started off thinking we could just go for straight e-commerce. It's pretty easy I've heard Matt actually, isn't it? Starting an e-commerce business. Attracting customers, all that kind of thing. So we went into it fairly naively let's say, thinking that everybody is rubbish at gifting and doesn't enjoy it. We know this because one in five end up in landfill.

Matt Edmundson (04:52)
Oh, it's a piece of cake. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Love it.

Lou (05:10)
and 80 % of people say they don't like it. So we've done our research. So we thought, great, we'll set up an e-comm site where we make people really good at gifting. And it was really hard. So trying to attract all those customers, the cost of that, and setting up a website with no previous experience in that area. So I suppose we very quickly realized that actually B2B might be the way forward for us to try and get our gifting off the ground.

But suddenly it wasn't just a little bit good for us, I suppose. Within a few months, we suddenly found that these ginormous global giants really wanted our service and what we did. So that's where that concierge comes in at, because we basically, it's a nice way of saying we did absolutely everything for them immediately. And we're now finding our way back to e-commerce, I suppose, with our scaling strategy. So yeah, I feel like it's a bit unconventional because I feel like we've kind of gone...

Matt Edmundson (05:49)
Mm.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Lou (06:07)
all the way around the houses to kind get back to where we initially started.

Matt Edmundson (06:09)
Mm.

I love it because what you did, Lou, was you, I'm not, have to be honest with you. I'm not a fan of the word I'm about to use. I need to find a better word. But you pivoted. And I like how that works. Do you know what mean? I have this philosophy. I call it discover, try, learn. You have a go, see what happens. You learn and then you change your behavior.

Right. And you, you adapt and you, you, you pivot. just, I don't know. I just don't like the word anyway. Uh, so I love this because a lot of people go into e-commerce and e-commerce is complicated. It is hard. is competitive. It is challenging. Um, it's not what it used to be. That's for sure. Um, it didn't quite work out how you thought it was going to. And so you ended up going down the B2B route rather than as the old saying goes, flogging a dead horse. Right. It was just.

What was the mindset there that caused you to do that to sort of think a little bit differently out of the box?

Lou (07:17)
think, I mean, part of it is in our name, right? So needy. And I must admit, I do love it because now when I go to events and conferences, quite often will have people saying, oh, you needy? Absolutely, very needy. We have a lot of our clients. I think we felt very quickly that we were really needed. We had some of those clients that came to us and were like, where have you been all of our life? Like, we needed your gifting service. Like, you whether it's the executive assistant at a ginormous company or the marketing manager, you know, literally there.

Matt Edmundson (07:28)
Hahaha

Mm.

Lou (07:47)
saying I get dumped on every year, someone just tells me last minute I have to buy 10,000 gifts for these people with this budget or gosh I've been looking for a supplier that could provide this but we want to use someone local but we don't have the time to know to onboard them and we just found that it was these big B2B clients that really needed us and I think that was you know

Matt Edmundson (08:09)
Mm.

Lou (08:12)
anybody that sets up a business, surely that's what they want, right? They want to be selling their product or their service to people that really want it, not having to try and flog it to them, basically. So that's what I think caused the pivot because these people were literally saying, my gosh, like, Stephanie, where have you been? We need what you're doing.

Matt Edmundson (08:21)
Mm.

Mm.

So did you start out doing B2B then? so it was, I'm kind of curious how these corporate clients found you and told you that they needed what you were doing.

Lou (08:41)
Really good question. So we, I suppose we started trying to work when we realized that we were doing our Facebook ads and we were doing a little bit of paid ads and we were, you know, trying our best to attract our, you know, our DTC customers and they were coming in. We had a few, gosh, I'll never forget. fact, the first day that somebody bought a gift and we didn't know the name between us. I mean, the joy, we were like, my gosh, who knows, you know, Betty.

Matt Edmundson (09:07)
Ha ha ha ha.

Lou (09:10)
But suddenly we thought, no, okay, we need to start attracting larger volumes of orders instead of these just what gifts here and there. So we just started LinkedIn, called Outreach just to people within companies. And literally from that, we would have a meeting and it kind of progressed to Steph and I walking into head offices of large companies with suitcases filled with gifts as well. So we've really tried all of the methods to attract people initially and clearly.

Matt Edmundson (09:15)
Mm.

Yeah.

Lou (09:40)
to refine that as time has gone on.

Matt Edmundson (09:43)
That's really interesting. You say you started out as DTC. Why I get the benefit of B2B, right? And I get the benefit of a client going, need 10,000 gifts. That solves a lot of problems straight away, doesn't it really? But why was DTC not working for you?

Lou (09:51)
you

Yeah, great question. I think it was for us, it was the cost of customer acquisition versus the rate that the sales were coming in. It was that simple. We weren't experienced enough to really understand and to, I suppose, very quickly compete with all of those competitors out there to drive that amount of traffic to our website. We were bootstrapped. We'd just come out of a tech accelerator.

Matt Edmundson (10:10)
Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Lou (10:30)
It was the Founder Institute Tech Accelerator, which is Silicon Valley backed. They're all about backing companies that are going to make millions of pounds and they want these companies to do it quickly. So there was some pressure as well, let's be honest. We'd come out of there, we'd got the backing and they were introducing us to investors, but we were still bootstrapped and we knew that in order to make this work, we needed to get some serious sales and money in very quickly before our own bootstrapping ran out.

Matt Edmundson (10:39)
Mm.

Lou (10:58)
And that was where I think that real drive to kind of get some of the corporate sales came from.

Matt Edmundson (11:02)
Right.

Yeah. So how did you, um, how did you sort of deal with the CAC or the cost of acquisition? Uh, sorry, with the three layer initials, everybody, but there's sort of the cost of customer acquisition. Um, I'm, I'm aware, I don't know if you know this, Lou, actually, but a few, a few weeks ago, I acquired a gift company. Uh, this is what part of the reason why I'm looking forward to this conversation.

⁓ I acquired a stake in a gift company, ⁓ which does sell DTC. And it is extraordinarily competitive. mean, it's, it's you're competing because gifts, it's not like, how can I describe it? It's not like skincare, right? Where skincare, we had a background in beauty. Skincare is stupid competitive, right? But, you know, there's a limit to how many moisturizers there are. But a moisturizer,

In effect, if you want a moisturizer, you buy a moisturizer, but with a gift. Well, a gift, well, that's quite, that's quite a loose term, isn't it? Because it can mean anything from a candle to a tea at Windsor Castle to, I don't know. The scope is so massive when it comes to gifts. It's kind of undefined, which means horrendous amounts of competition, you know, and, and, and trying to help

people find gifts who don't know what they want to buy. I'm going to come back to the concierge thing in a sec. So I am aware of the cost of acquisition of a gift customer and I'm aware of how competitive it is. I'm curious, what was your response initially when you started to understand the cost of acquisition?

Lou (12:48)
Initially, think it was we knew that we would have had to have done so much more work on our website, our funnel, our landing page to even have dealt with the volume of traffic that was coming through to be able to get there. And I think just like what you said there about that huge problem being a punctual, what is a gift, you know, like.

Matt Edmundson (13:04)
Mm.

Lou (13:15)
How do you even get somebody searching for your particular gift that you're offering? And then the third part, I suppose the third piece of the puzzle was we were also in that chicken and egg position as well, Matt, but we were still trying to attract the best small and local independent businesses and their products onto our website. So we needed the gifts to sell to people and then we needed the people to sell the gifts to. So we were also, like I say, in that real chicken and egg stage where we had to try and take a bet on one or the other.

Matt Edmundson (13:19)
Mm.

Yeah.

Mm.

Lou (13:44)
So I suppose coming back to this, we kind of took our bets on the larger orders because we thought, tell you what, if we want to get the best products on our site, if I go to one of my merchants that I've now on boarded and say, I've got an order for 10,000 of your product, they're going to be more likely to want to onboard and sell with me than if I'm going to a one-off trying to get my margin that way.

Matt Edmundson (13:49)
Yeah.

Yeah, that's fair play. It's interesting, isn't it? you're so needy then. ⁓ You're not selling gifts, you're manufacturing. You're selling gifts in effect, you're reselling other people's gifts from local suppliers, which I love that philosophy. Can I just say that's awesome. So you're reselling local crafts and gifts and so on and so forth.

So actually then when you started out, it is double jeopardy for you, isn't it? Because quite often when people start an e-commerce business, they've normally got a product, either they're making it themselves or they've got a good source of that product that they can get a hold of. So when you're starting out, you're like, you've got to get both. ⁓ and so if it sounds like Lou,

You're quite entrepreneurial. It sounds like you're a bit of a risk taker, a bit of a, if I dare say an all in kind of a gal, this is a great idea. Let's go for it. ⁓ I, it's not about crossing the T's or dotting the I's. It's just about, let's just go. Let's see what happens. There's that, ⁓ there's an old, ⁓ you know, sort of phrase. It's easier to turn a call when it's moving and it just sounds, it just sounds to me like that's your makeup. That's your DNA. Would that be a fair comment? Or if I'm

Lou (15:27)
Do you know what, think there may be some truth in that, I think myself and my co-founder Steph, we had worked together for 10 years previous and we always knew that we were just ready to start this business. Our business previously had seen us, you know, having over 50 global staff and trying to motivate them and make them feel great. And we knew that the best way of doing that was through connecting and through showing people that you truly care, that you truly see who they are.

Matt Edmundson (15:39)
Mm.

Lou (15:56)
And what better way to do that than through gifting? Gifting is literally the ultimate way. If you get it right, and that is the key behind meadie, if you get it right, that gift can be transformational in your relationship. Be that with a loved one, a friend, a colleague, a client, a teammate. It can literally be the thing that changes how that person sees you in your relationship. And it was something that we knew we were quite good at doing as well because we

Matt Edmundson (15:58)
Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Lou (16:25)
loved people. Getting the psychology behind that and then finding the right products behind that, then seeing the next steps. So I think we always knew where we want to, in our head, the dream was always, and from day one, it was always to create the most feel good, and that was really important to us, the most feel good gifting platform. And so for us, actually, that doesn't matter if it was B2B or D2C or whatever it was. The point was we set out to build something huge.

Matt Edmundson (16:33)
Mm.

Lou (16:53)
that was going to support local businesses and connect millions of people. And that is what we're doing now, but it's just not the route that we've set out initially.

Matt Edmundson (17:03)
It never is though, that's the thing, isn't it? You never end up on the, you never do go the route you initially set out on, I feel. There's always a bit ⁓ of wobble to the plan, let's just say. sort of how long has Needy been going?

Lou (17:20)
So we launched our website, it was the 30th of November, 2021. That's when we first launched it. So yes, just over four years, yeah.

Matt Edmundson (17:31)
Yeah, yeah, just coming up for your four year anniversary. And are you, if you sort of look back over the last four years, if you could sort of rewind the clock and go give yourself a bit of advice at the start, what would it be?

Lou (17:45)
Oh my gosh, I've got a book map. I would have read this entire book of all the things. But then equally, before I do answer it, part of me almost says, I wouldn't because that, do you know what, I remember somebody else saying it to me before and I thought, that sounds quite silly. But if I'd gone into it knowing everything I know now, knowing how hard it would be, we talked about learning and how important that is. Me and Steph always joke that there's no curve. It's not a learning curve.

Matt Edmundson (17:56)
Mm.

Yeah.

Lou (18:15)
it's like a straight up pole basically of learning that you are just climbing every single bell. That's it, you got it. And it's like, do you know what, if we did know all of that back then, gosh, why would we have done it? Because there's been, know, we've been through so much and it's been so hard. So taking that into account, the one thing that I do think would have got us here a little bit faster would be if we trusted our gut instincts a little bit quicker.

Matt Edmundson (18:18)
You

the sheer cliff face. Yeah.

Mm.

Lou (18:45)
early on because I believe we got to a few points of growing the company where we got to complete, you've got your fight, flight or freeze mode haven't you? I think we froze like a few times because we were constantly asking for advice and all these mentors, all these incredible tech and econ people that we were going to and it was great but they all had a blooming different opinion, really passionately had a different opinion.

Matt Edmundson (18:45)
Okay.

Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Yep.

Lou (19:12)
We ended

Matt Edmundson (19:12)
Yep.

Lou (19:13)
up spending all of this time taking all this advice on board to try and build up our own confidence and knowledge and ended up just completely freezing. Well actually the bits that have really shown us the biggest growth in our company honestly have been trust in our gut instinct.

Matt Edmundson (19:25)
Mm.

Yeah, because fundamentally you're selling a service, aren't you? And people buy from people they know, like, and trust. And you can talk about things like, I'm lowering my cost of acquisition, you know, and conversion rate optimization. And these are all really good things, but fundamentally people buy from people they know, like, and trust. And I think if you're selling a commodity, Amazon is a great place to do that because it is soulless and it is lifeless, but it's efficient.

And it is practical and it works and it's trustworthy as a system. And you can go and sell the commodity on there to your heart's content. but actually when you're selling something that's got a bit of a story, ⁓ or a bit of a service attached to it, well, that's a little bit different, isn't it? And, I think, I, I think actually

because you know that industry and because you know that people, can see why that would have worked for you. You you're the one with the vision, you're the one with the passion, you're the one understanding the need. And so what mechanism, I guess, have you found that works well for that, for that message, that story, that... How do you get that across to people?

Lou (20:44)
know what is something that we're constantly evaluating. I even think like one of my many meetings as I was talking to you about before that I had today was about trying to improve some of our materials that do tell that story. But we do find that there's a couple of different ways. One, think we are still, especially when they're big companies and big orders, we really, really value in-person meetings with them, which I know isn't.

Matt Edmundson (20:58)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Lou (21:11)
doesn't sound scalable, but it is if they're to be spending a million or so with you a year, of course, and really getting to the crux of why that person wants that particular gift or something or product, that really, really helps. And secondly, think giving examples of the types of gifts and things that we've done for other companies always works really well, trying to get those testimonials and showcases. I think you very quickly are able to explain to somebody when another company has come up with a very similar

Matt Edmundson (21:15)
Yep.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Lou (21:40)
problem, you know, how we fix that. We always end up fixing their problems for them through these lovely products and gifts. So giving case studies really helps.

Matt Edmundson (21:46)
Yeah.

That's really, again, I don't want to just skip past this because I'm really intrigued by the first thing you said. We helped them understand why, why they're wanting to buy this gift. What is it they're wanting? And this comes back again to Econcierge service. This is why it's not a commodity, it's a service because fundamentally great e-commerce, you know, that's not commodity sales.

great storytelling helps people understand the why, the why behind what they're doing. And I love the fact that you're digging into this because when you understand their why to quote Simon Sinek, know, the sort of the golden circle as he calls it, well, then actually sales become a lot easier, don't they? you, and satisfaction goes to a lot higher because you've, you've understood the core reason.

What are the main reasons why people buy gifts? And I'm asking this is a very selfish, ⁓ from a very selfish point of view, as I said, a newly acquired gift company. I'm curious to understand what you've learned here. Why are people buying gifts?

Lou (23:00)
ultimately, it will always come down to some variation of connection. So if that is a corporate gift, they're looking to show a client that they know them, that they are trustworthy, and to instil their, I suppose, their part in that relationship. That's what a gift is. A gift is cementing what your relationship means to that person.

Matt Edmundson (23:22)
Yep. Yep.

Lou (23:28)
I could, this is a subject, I mean, we've got a fantastic professor of altruism and gifting that we spoke to very, very early on in the initial stages of media, because it is that psychology behind the gifting that absolutely, you know, me and Steph are pure, geeks about. But I think there are so many factors you have to consider when buying a gift. That relationship, I'll give you one just very simple example. If you are in a relationship, if you were to buy your grandmother a

Matt Edmundson (23:40)
Mm.

Lou (23:58)
gift for her birthday, you might maybe buy her some flowers or something lovely. Now, she might give you a tenner, right, as your grandson, right, she might give you a tenner, and that's okay, but would you ever give your granny a tenner? No, because you have to always consider, you know, what is your relationship status? Who, what are the reasons behind it? There are so many tiny micro reasons that make a gift and cement a relationship.

Matt Edmundson (24:06)
Mm.

Didn't I?

Yeah.

Lou (24:26)
And they can actually be distilled by asking that person a few questions. But that's a very long and winded answer to say, ultimately, comes down to that connection with that person. You would not buy somebody a gift if you weren't looking for a particular connection.

Matt Edmundson (24:30)
Mm.

And again, as I'm listening to you talk, this ties back into the first time you made about understanding, help them understand why we understand why they want the gift. We help clients understand why is they want to bring those gifts. And you made this statement that you and Steph, who I assume is your co-founder and business partner, You spend hours looking at the psychology behind this.

putting an awful lot of time and energy into learning ⁓ the why and understanding that. And so I'm going to ask a really obvious question now. Why? Why are you putting so much time and energy into that?

Lou (25:22)
That's a great question rather than just because I suppose it comes back to what you initially said. It's a very, very crowded market and anybody can buy a gift from somewhere. But when we did our initial market research, which we had to remember, we had to pitch this back to the Silicon Valley Founder Institute Tech Accelerator about exactly why we were doing Needy. Some of the big things that we couldn't shake were the fact that I think it was, it like, it was that one in five gifts in land go.

Matt Edmundson (25:37)
Mm.

Lou (25:48)
it was that practically everybody that we interviewed had said they'd received a crap gift and that over 80 % of people said that they hated the stress of finding the right gift. You then add to that just how much damage a bad gift can cause, right? So you're a T total, you're given a box of wine for Christmas by your employer. There's so many things that sell, you know, in this, and especially in this...

Matt Edmundson (25:53)
Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Lou (26:17)
inevitably in a slightly less connected hybrid working world. The why is so important because people could just, there's so much stuff out there, people are overwhelmed basically. And that's a lot of, you know, know a lot of fellow econ people really struggle with that. They've got all the products, but people are overwhelmed trying to make that choice. And we know that if we can help funnel them through the right questions and get them to the right decision and make that a lot easier for them, then suddenly,

Matt Edmundson (26:28)
Yeah.

Lou (26:43)
That's what separates us, the entire gifting experience from the minute somebody starts thinking about buying a gift to the minute someone receives it and says thank you. You know, that whole experience should be a good feel, not a stressful one.

Matt Edmundson (26:58)
So can I ask them in the midst of this, who's your actual clients? Because let's take ⁓ a company. I'm just going to say DJI. I don't think DJI is a client of yours, but they just happen to be on my desk, Lou. That's why. So let's say they're a big corporate client, right? And they're going to spend half a million quid with you over the next year. They want whatever, however many thousand gifts that buys them.

Your reasoning then in terms of, understand the why, you want to send out the gifts, you want to make sure that you're not sending wine to a teatotaler or a meat gift to a vegan and so on and so forth. But who's your client? Right? Is it DJI or is it the end user?

Lou (27:42)
Our client would be the corporate right now, so they would be DJI because it would be the person, the gifter, the person who wants to give the gift to somebody else.

Matt Edmundson (27:56)
And here's where it gets interesting, isn't it? Because for you to maintain a relationship with the gifter, the recipient of the gift has got to have an exceptional experience.

Lou (28:07)
really like the gift. Yeah.

Matt Edmundson (28:09)
And so that's where you're, it's an interesting thing. And I've found this again with the gift industry, because with the beauty, it's fairly straightforward. You're normally buying it for yourself, right? Does it work? Yes or no? It's simple answer to the question. If it does, you'll probably buy it again, if it's a fair, reasonable value. With gifting, your client is the person buying the gift. It's the same for us. Your delivery mechanism,

is for the actual recipient of the gift because the way you get the gift or your client to buy from you a second time is to deliver such an exceptional experience that that person goes, that was a hell of a gift, bro. Thank you so much.

Lou (28:48)
comes back to the why. Which if you understand why the person wants to buy for this person and what that reasoning is, then from that there are also a series of bits of information and data that we would collect about the potential recipients of the gift that can help us to ensure they do get that wow factor. There are also some other bits involved as well like the, like we keep talking about the experience. It's not just about the gift, so I think a really nice example would be

Matt Edmundson (29:03)
Mm.

Mm.

Lou (29:17)
a sleep mask, right? So if I were to send you a sleep mask in the post and it was wrapped and you got it and for Christmas you just said, you know, happy Christmas, I have a sleep mask from Lou. Like, oh, that's interesting. Thanks for that, you know, great. But if that sleep mask actually came with a lovely video message from me or a really, you know, a really great message that kind of explained

I've got this for you because I know you've really been struggling with your sleep at the moment and ⁓ it's made from bamboo. know sustainability is really important to you and blah, blah, blah, blah. Suddenly that, it just becomes a fantastic gift saying, you know, I got you this because I want you to have a better night's sleep and do more of your amazing podcasts. You know, I think that that's the bit that gets lost sometimes in just a standard transaction.

Matt Edmundson (29:48)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Lou (30:10)
buying

gift is one thing, but the whole experience is something else. And that does require delving in a little bit further into the process. But the outcome of that is so much better than just buying one product.

Matt Edmundson (30:23)
Love this because, and this speaks again to the heart of it, right? So I have this theory, Lou, that I have this thing called digital Davids, right? This sort of phrase where I think that most of us in e-commerce are what I would call digital Davids. We are in effect fighting our version of Goliath, which I'm going to, for the sake of argument, I'm going to put out there is Amazon or Walmart or some of the bigger guys, right? The commodity sites. And

The story of David and Goliath centers around David not trying to fight the fight with Saul's armor. And he fought the fight differently. I think he, I can't remember the exact number of stones from when I read it, he picks up five stones and he, and we, know, he uses those in his slingshot because that's what he's really good at. And I think I, I'm loving your story because what I'm hearing is a digital David has fought this battle.

on their own terms and you've understood how it is that you're going to win this battle with this true with a sort of authentic voice and outcome that you've got in terms of understanding the why. And I love, love, love the idea of the experience being super, super important. I was

And I'm aware of this, right? So when we were a small company, we would often put handwritten notes in our deliveries. As you get bigger, that's really hard to do. And so you stop doing it, but you get bigger because you put the handwritten notes in the box. And so it's finding a way, isn't it, to sort of scale with a great experience that becomes important.

Lou (32:05)
I just love that as a story because that's where the bigger clients are coming to us. They've stopped connecting with their staff because they haven't had the time to write the notes and the cards for their people. And that's what we're doing for them. We're working with these local independents who, what? They can hand write the note in the box for their staff. And suddenly that connection means so much more.

Matt Edmundson (32:18)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Mm.

Lou (32:31)
And we actually are, one of our other Goliaths we're up against is really generic gift vouchers. And people are given that as a gift, right? That's a really standard gift. well done. You've been here for 10 years. Have a 50 pound one for all us or other vouchers apply. You know, a voucher that you can just use anywhere and it's really generic. gosh, that doesn't say thank you for being here for 10 years, but we're...

Matt Edmundson (32:41)
Mm. Yeah.

Mm.

Lou (32:58)
doing the little handwritten note by explaining why that person is valuable to them. Yeah, we're helping make it bigger.

Matt Edmundson (33:00)
Yeah.

One of the things that you, don't know if you can see it actually. You can't because the camera lens, the depth of field is very shallow. Behind me is a old fashioned typewriter, a 1960s typewriter, which I've had for a little while. I've just replaced the ribbons on it, Luke. And something that I realized a while ago was the power of a handwritten note. Now in the world of email,

⁓ it's very easy to email somebody and say, Hey, bud, thanks for that. That was great. ⁓ appreciate you being on the podcast and, and blah, blah, blah. And that has a certain level of meaning, right. And it's better to do that than do nothing. ⁓ and then if I want to, if I want to make the meaning better, then I might text you, I might go, but I might text you the same thing. Right. So then I might want to make it mean a little bit more. So then I, I send you a voice note or I send you a video.

One of the things that I've found is actually if I took the time to handwrite a note with my beautiful ⁓ Tom Studio Phantom pen here, I invested in my pen because I really wanted good penmanship. ⁓ So that means something entirely. The downside I found, Lou, was people couldn't read my handwriting. So they were grateful for the letter, but I can't read it, Matt. Can you decipher? So then I thought, how can I do this?

And I came across a video by Peter McKinnon and I thought, actually, this is very, very, he does a similar thing. So I type on a typewriter, my notes, and it takes a long time to put the same message on a piece of paper with a typewriter. And then I sign it with my Tom Studio, but shout out to Tom Studio. If you want a Phantom Pango to Tom Studio, tell them Matt sent you, cause they're great. But it's really interesting that you can take the same thing, the same message.

but package it in a different way and it means so much more, right?

Lou (35:04)
course, you're telling that person that they're valuable to you, that your time is always, all of us, time is one of our most precious commodities, it's everybody's most precious commodity. And you're giving that person that you value more of your time by typing out on your typewriter, by writing it handwritten. Anybody can send a generic, whatever, but that's what you're saying as soon as you do it. So yeah, completely agree.

Matt Edmundson (35:24)
Mm.

Yeah, it's interesting. So where's it all going for you guys? What does the future hold? What's the hope?

Lou (35:35)
Wow, okay, so where is it going? Right now, we are in what I would call our real scale up phase at the moment. So we got past the initial hurdles. We realized that actually what we're offering people did want. We did, I think, said, was it 23, 24, that financial year, we did about half a million in sales. We've just finished our financial year now on two million. This financial year that we've just started is our five million pound revenue year.

Matt Edmundson (35:41)
Mm-hmm.

Lou (36:04)
And then of course, one elimination map straight after that, like literally. So in all fairness, it's about growing the huge corporates and businesses that we're with at the moment so that we like it when we really embed in an organization. So they might have started using us for their new starter gifts because they want everyone that joins the company to feel amazing. And then suddenly they realized we also do every single special occasion gift that they could ever want.

We can also do their brand of merchandise, we can do everything. So we want to be a really embedded part of that organization. And part of the reason we want to embed as well is our mission and our dream for the future is some of these organizations that we work with have hundreds of thousands of global staff and we want them to start using us for their D2C gifting in future. So once they've received some amazing, needy gifts through their company, they trust their brand, they know that we're doing what we do, why wouldn't they want to use us for their husband and their wife's gifts and their kids' gifts?

Matt Edmundson (36:47)
Mm.

Right.

Yeah.

Lou (37:01)
and things like that in future. So if we keep doing what we're doing, the amount of revenue that we should be bringing the local economy and the small businesses and the independents that work with us, I would hope we'll be absolutely through the roof in the next few years.

Matt Edmundson (37:14)
Love that. I love ambitious growth as well. So you quadrupled in the last five years, last 12 months, sorry. And you're looking to, you know, do some significant growth again this year. Is that a personal choice or is that driven by the investment? Is that a she was a, I kind of get the feeling this is you guys, you're quite driven. I feel like.

Lou (37:40)
quite driven. love that. Yeah, Steph will be absolutely giggling away listening to this later. We are quite driven, Matt, actually. And it's funny, I think, because as well, I mean, I've got, both mums of young kids, right? I've got two-year-old twins and a seven-year-old. Steph's a three-year-old. Like, we, know, mostly when they first meet us think, we always get asked, know, is it a lifestyle business? And we just absolutely laugh because, I mean, what we've done over last few years.

Matt Edmundson (37:45)
Hahaha

Lou (38:09)
It's not a lifestyle business, it's our whole lives. our other, in my case, it's my fourth baby. It's so much, and yeah, we are really driven and we are really, do not unashamedly driven in what we want to build because the further we get into this and the more business leaders of other big corporates that we work with, we've realized how important it is to kind of to grow a business that actually

Matt Edmundson (38:11)
No.

Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Lou (38:37)
Like from our hearts, know, are stuffing gifts, go to landfill. We're supporting small and local businesses. We're helping people connect better with each other. We're having quite a laugh doing it. Like we've got a team of really, just really good, fun, brilliant, talented people. And I think Steph and I have always wanted that. We've wanted to show that for my daughters and my son and hers as well, we want to show that you can be successful, do good in the world, have a good time doing it.

Matt Edmundson (38:39)
Mmm.

Lou (39:07)
And the other thing is, know, neither Steph or I have got a degree. We haven't come from money. We never had that silver spoon. We're grafters. And a bit like you alluded to at the beginning, that like there's always an answer, you know? If something doesn't work, speak to people, learn and pivot and find another way. So yeah, we are pretty driven, but we think it comes from a really good place.

Matt Edmundson (39:10)
Mm.

Yeah.

no doubt. Maybe driven is the wrong word. Enthusiastic would be a good word. Passionate would be another one that I would describe you as, you I can see why people, corporate execs would feel confident that you're going to get the right gifts for them because it's like, I would get the sense that actually you care about the people you're giving the gifts to. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're the kind of, I'm the kind of guy that was never a fan of going shopping.

Lou (39:34)
Thank you.

So much. Yeah, there's a lot of care.

Matt Edmundson (39:56)
for gifts because I'm always I'm the 88 % or whatever it was going, what the am I going to buy a gift? And there are a few people that I would call and go, would you mind getting my gifts from me? They're like, I would love to. And you strike me as that kind of person that just absolutely gets a real kick out of it.

Lou (40:14)
We are all that person at Media, like our entire team are those people. It's brilliant, yeah.

Matt Edmundson (40:19)
How do you

balance then being ⁓ an entrepreneur, a successful business lady, growing business, ⁓ and having quite young kids and living in the countryside? How do you do that whole family thing?

Lou (40:38)
So I suppose a lot of coffee in the mornings really helps, good flow, significant amount of coffee actually. Decent Wi-Fi, got some really good broadband around here as well, because obviously that's the key. And in all honesty, an incredibly supportive husband, I mean he works as well, but we both play our part. And flexible working as well.

Matt Edmundson (40:42)
Ha

Yeah, caffeine, the key to everything.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Lou (41:06)
The other thing is, you know, something we thought about, we actually, have a lot of parents in the team as well. And one of the rules is, you know, if you ever need to pick up your kid at school, watch a school play, do the basics, what we think is just like human nature, you know, things around your friends and family that are needed, that's not book time off work, that's make sure there's someone to cover your workload and go and do what needs to be done. So when we say flexible working, you know, I will usually finish around four to go in.

Matt Edmundson (41:28)
Mm.

Lou (41:34)
do the kids pick up, a bit of that, have a lovely evening and then I'll jump back online a bit later. So we do do a lot of flexibility around that and I think that really has enabled us to grow with our families. Don't get it right all the time. I think some weeks I'm a brilliant mum and some weeks I'm a brilliant business person. I don't think it's often that I feel like I'm having a week being completely honest, you know, where I feel like I'm both at the same time. But I do know that when it's out of kilter one week,

Matt Edmundson (41:40)
Mm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Lou (42:04)
I'll speak to my co-founder, Steph. She'll do the same thing to me and will ensure that the following week works out for that person. There's a lot of care within the company as well, for sure.

Matt Edmundson (42:09)
Mm-hmm.

That's where the partnership is helpful. Isn't it? Because especially if you're at similar life stages, which it sounds like you are, you can hold each other to account. think, um, which is, which is really, really important. I remember starting my business when just after my first child, Josh was born. Now you were going back a little bit because he's just turned. He's about to turn 24. Um, I think yes, 24, just working out the maths in my head. a long time ago. you, you stopped counting after a while. Um, but he.

I remember building the business and you're balancing building a business with being a parent. And obviously from my point of view, being a husband as well. ⁓ here I am, you know, I 24 year old kid. He's an absolute legend. Got three kids in total. They're all legends. Still married to my wife. Who's an amazing person. 27 years married. And I don't know if I've got much right in life, but I think I've got that right. ⁓ and I look back.

And that for me is the most important thing, right? I look back and go, I still run my business. I still have the flexibility, which is great. think, ⁓ I still get on well with my kids and I still get on well with my wife. And there's that famous line, isn't there from Jerry Maguire, the guy at the end says, I love my life and I love my wife and I wish you my kind of success. ⁓ and I think.

I think it's such a powerful thing to be able to say and to keep that balance. think the fact that you're doing it is testament to what you guys are doing. So made it for you guys. It sounds awesome.

Lou (43:43)
Thank you.

Thank you. think you nailed it. Surrounding yourselves with people that share that similar mentality. Because if one of us was different or didn't think family was absolutely number one important and didn't rate that above having to cancel or whatever, then that would be really difficult for sure. And the other thing that someone said to me really recently was about, become those five people that you most hang out with.

Matt Edmundson (43:50)
Mm.

Yeah.

No doubt.

yeah, absolutely.

Lou (44:13)
I think just checking in on that because I love the five people that I hang around with the most and I love who that is pushing me and turning me to be. And in turn, I believe I'm doing the same for my family as well. So yeah, it's nice to check on that.

Matt Edmundson (44:18)
Mm.

Mm. Mm.

Yeah. Yeah, no doubt.

No doubt. That becomes even more true as your kids get older. You kids hang around with this who they become. It's the parenting thing is like, can I influence the friends in any way? If I can, how do I do that? It's a yeah. Tell you all the secrets that we employed. Absolutely. Absolutely love this. So

Lou (44:33)
Yes.

That sounds like another episode, I'm up for that one.

Matt Edmundson (44:55)
You seem like from the surface, you're doing all right, aren't you? You seem like you're enjoying it.

Lou (45:07)
So enjoying it doesn't cover it. Absolutely. I mean, the passion is fully real. You know, when you have the opportunity to be with our clients, our merchants, our team, I think very occasionally, fact, like today, Matt, to be fair, like sitting here and talking to you when my head's not just in the nitty gritty of running the business and putting out all the fires and dealing with everything. Yeah, do you know what? Yeah, we love it. We've come really far and are doing really good things. So yeah, we're really pleased.

Matt Edmundson (45:13)
Mm.

Mm.

Mm.

Brilliant, Lou, listen, we've got to the stage of the show where I'm going to ask you for a question for me. This is where you get to ask me your question. And I will, of course, answer this at some point in the near future on social media. Lou, what's your question?

Lou (45:49)
I'm thinking about this because I figured, that you speak to so many different people in so many different companies. And I would love to know, when you have been speaking to them, what would you summarize as the defining factors of that person and their personality that you could say, yeah, they're going to be a success or what they're doing is incredibly successful?

Matt Edmundson (46:16)
Mm-hmm.

Lou (46:17)
I'd love to know what they are because you must have now over the years as well that you've been doing, seen people really, you know, either do really well or not. So that's my question for you, those defining qualities and traits, what are?

Matt Edmundson (46:20)
⁓ yeah.

that's a really good question. We shall get into that on social media. If you want to know how I'm going to answer that question, come follow me on LinkedIn, Matt Edmondson, and I'll answer the question there at some point. It's a really good question, Luing. You've got me thinking because even just with the podcasts, I think I don't know how many hundreds, if not thousands of people I've interviewed over the years and talked to them about what makes them successful. We had another podcast for a while where I was just literally interviewing business leaders about what made them successful.

Really fascinating. Of course, you have to define what success is to understand this, but that's I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit. Look, how do people reach you? How do they connect with you if they want to do that?

Lou (47:06)
So I say the best way of doing it is on LinkedIn. I'd go to LinkedIn and it's Louise Doyle on LinkedIn. The website Needy is www.needy.co.uk and I might also give you a couple of links if we have any aspiring merchants here that actually want to sell their products into the corporates and help you just as well.

Matt Edmundson (47:29)
Go for it.

Fantastic. Fantastic. We will of course put all of those links in the show notes along with Lou's linked in profile and the website needy. Lou, listen, one thing you should never change was when you gave the website, you actually said www.needy.co.uk. I cannot begin to tell you how that thrills me because everyone just, they've forgotten the www.

thing. It's like, ⁓ no, no, no, it's just needy.co.uk isn't it? No, no, no, no, put the www.www.www.in there. I love it. I do the same thing. I think I but I think I'm probably a little bit more old school. Been around a little bit longer, maybe I don't know. don't know. ⁓ Listen, like I said, you're the star, we do this thing on the show now called saving the best till last and

Lou (47:59)
this.

It's equal time to process now.

Matt Edmundson (48:25)
This is where I would love for you to give your top tips specifically if I can guide it perhaps. Because I'm convinced one of the power forces for our workplaces, if I can put it this way, is mums returning back to work after the birth of their kids, right? And I think ⁓ we've employed a number of mums returning back to work.

You have to, like you say, you have to be flexible in doing that. But I'm aware that there are mums listening to this show who are at a very similar life stage. What is your top tip for that demographic? I would love for you to spend the next two minutes just going for it. The mic is yours.

Lou (49:14)
Amazing. And just to clarify, is this for attracting them back to work or for looking for work? Amazing. So I think it's twofold from both. I agree with you, Matt, from an employer's point of view, I believe that mums returning from work are absolutely huge asset. And it is quite funny, I do think, of our 11 employees, we are talking over half of them are fat. So from our point of view, I think the way that we've managed to attract.

Matt Edmundson (49:19)
Either. Just mum's going back to work.

Lou (49:41)
these incredible women who work so hard, are incredible at multitasking, thinking outside the box and getting stuff done, would be, in all honesty, empathy. I think it's number one. We empathise, we listen, we adapt for them. I think that flexibility that we discuss is not standard flexibility like, oh, we offer flexible working, which is something very generic and one size fits all. It's we listen to our individual employees and

Matt Edmundson (49:46)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Lou (50:11)
figure out what it is that they need. And I think from the other side of things, I've seen some really horrible stats lately about how much of a salary drop women will often take when they are returning to work and about how difficult it can be. So my advice from that side is know your worth, speak to other people, speak to employers like myself who really, really rate and understand women going back to work and get a little bit of

Matt Edmundson (50:32)
Mm-hmm.

Lou (50:41)
Before you go on that interview or apply for a job, get somebody to hype you up a little bit yourself because I've done it myself as well where I've definitely underplayed myself in certain scenarios and I wish if only I'd spoken to somebody who's kind had my back a bit sooner, they could have given me a little bit of, it's always easier for someone else to say nice things and good things about you than it is for you to do it yourself, isn't it? So I'd suggest as I'm returning to work, find those other champions of you to help you re-engage in the workforce.

Matt Edmundson (51:10)
fantastic. All very top advice. Love that. Lou, listen, it has been an absolute treat and an absolute pleasure having you on the show. Thank you so much for joining us. It's genuinely been great. I've loved it.

Lou (51:23)
Thank you, it's been a real pleasure. I really enjoyed it too, Matt. Thank you.

Matt Edmundson (51:27)
Well, there you go. Ladies and gentlemen, big thanks to Lou again for joining me. Don't forget to check out the website where all the links to Lou will be there. And of course, if you're listening to this on a podcast, there'll be in the show notes in the podcast play that you're using. No doubt. You can find all the links. Go and connect with Lou now. Go and tell her how much you enjoyed the show. I'm sure she'd love to hear from you. But thank you so much for joining us wherever you are in the world. It's great. I love these kinds of episodes. Love these conversations. And like I said at the start, I get to do this because you guys keep listening to it. So.

Thank you so much for that. Have a phenomenal week wherever you are. I'll see you next time. Bye for now.