Now see the adverts – and victors of the virus:
First he was shut in a fridge with the PM. Now milkman Simon Mellin is just one of a new breed of enterprising...
LOCKDOWN has devastated many of Britain’s businesses – pubs, restaurants, cafes, gyms, high street retailers, leisure operators and more. All have been forced to close for weeks and many are unlikely to see the year out.
But while a majority of businesses are struggling, there are those for whom lockdown has been a huge, if unasked-for, boost. From toy manufacturers and online tutors, to website builders, cake makers and delivery companies – sales have soared and customer numbers have never been higher.
Some are finding it hard to even keep up with demand – a strange feeling for those businesses lucky enough to be in such a situation.
‘It’s been the busiest period of my entire life, but the last thing you want to do is look like you are gloating,’ one entrepreneur told The Mail on Sunday last week. ‘If this was happening six months ago, you’d feel on top of the world, but it’s weird to be having such a successful time thanks to such a rubbish situation.’
One business which has seen takings soar since lockdown is The Modern Milkman, a subscription milk and grocery delivery company in North West England.
Until lockdown, chief executive Simon Mellin’s most surreal moment as a businessman was being shut in a fridge one morning with Boris Johnson (who was hiding from the press during last year’s General Election campaign).
But it was topped when lockdown saw demand for his delivery service almost double overnight – adding more than 10,000 extra customers.
Simon co-founded The Modern Milkman in 2018 having been inspired by David Attenborough’s The Blue Planet series to help people use less plastic. Milk and other breakfast items such as juice and eggs are collected directly from local dairies and delivered straight to customers’ doorsteps, using returnable, reusable packaging such as glass bottles.
‘We were a successful business before, but lockdown has transformed us,’ he says. ‘It’s an awful backdrop, but it is great to have been able to help people. Customers are happy as we’re contact-free
– people pay online and the goods are placed on their doorstep. As for local dairies and farmers, around half their business is usually to pubs and restaurants and that got completely switched off, so we’ve helped them out.’ Simon adds: ‘Business has been so busy we’ve even employed 50 extra drivers.’ Plans to raise more money via private equity have now been shelved thanks to the good health of the business.
‘It’s been great for community too,’ says Simon. ‘It’s like going back to the 1960s and 1970s – before people got everything from the supermarket.’ Nick Somper is founder of online butcher The Dorset Meat Company. He sells ethically reared, grass-fed meat from independent local farms. Like Simon Mellin, he has seen business boom. ‘We saw a huge spike in web traffic straightaway when coronavirus hit,’ he says. ‘We actually had to switch our site off most of the time because we only had a finite amount of stock available. Even so, we had a huge order take up and our business trebled if not quadrupled overnight in terms of orders.’
Nick resisted dropping his quality threshold just to be able to keep up with demand. ‘We could have sold four or five times as much as we did in March and April thanks to demand,’ he says. ‘But our objective hasn’t been about just selling during lockdown, it’s about how we come out of it as a business afterwards. We want to retain customers who like buying their food online, so we’ve really concentrated on customer service.’
The business is now a year ahead of where it was supposed to be thanks to the coronavirus effect and it is about to launch a subscripspirit
tion service as well as expand its range of produce to prepared meats such as peppered steak and herbcrusted lamb.
It isn’t just food which has benefited from lockdown. Molly Masters runs book subscription service Books that Matter, which focuses on inspiring woman’s fiction. She has seen customer numbers jump from around 900 in February to 2,000 this month and expects to attract between 3,000 and 4,000 next month.
‘It’s just crazy – we’ve never reached these kind of numbers before,’ says Molly, 23, who set up Books that Matter two years ago while studying English Literature at the University of Sussex. ‘It’s been really lovely to be part of people rediscovering their love of reading or getting into femaleled fiction, so that’s been a real positive.’
Customers pay £17 a month for a subscription box containing new or classic fiction, along with three items from female artists, such as tote bags or embroidery packs.
‘This month we went for a theme around kindness and compassion which seemed most appropriate – and that proved really popular,’ says Molly.
At the start of lockdown, as a result of a demand for more books from customers, she started a ‘books and treats’ box containing three books which comes out every other Friday and sells out every time. ‘The first one we did in lockdown sold out in 20 minutes,’ says Molly.
Managing the spike in demand hasn’t been easy. ‘We’ve been working morning, noon and night,’ says Molly, ‘and the rule book on how far we plan ahead has been thrown out of the window. It’s been stressful, but it’s also a labour of love. The overall situation in the wider economy is horrible and we didn’t expect to grow as a result of it, but it’s been great to have been able to be a part of making this awful experience more bearable for some people.’
Oxfordshire-based Sandy Leaf Farm has also benefited from people wanting to occupy their time during lockdown. The company, which was founded by Scott MacDonald and Gabriel Yao, sells DIY food, drink and homeware kits, so customers can make mozzarella cheese, infuse gin with different flavours and colours and create their own candles.
‘Our peak period is usually Christmas as our products are great for gifts, but there’s been a huge increase in people buying our kits during lockdown,’ says Scott. ‘People are looking for something interesting to do at home as well as to make something which they’d usually enjoy in a restaurant.’
Over the past two months sales have shot up by 400 per cent and some, such as Sandy Leaf’s winemaking kit, proved so popular that they’ve sold out and haven’t been able to replace it yet. Such is the backlog that orders placed now will not be dispatched until mid-June.
‘It’s been tricky to deal with, especially as some of our employee are shielding, so we’re working longer hours than normal,’ says Scott. ‘It has been difficult to meet orders, but it’s really helped that we also sell through Amazon. We can send items into its warehouses and it then handles all the heavy lifting such as mailing and returns which really speeds things up.
He adds: ‘Getting great feedback from people enjoying the kits makes all the hard work worthwhile.’
Has your business found a way to thrive despite the crisis? Email sarah.bridge@mailonsunday.co.uk