MY LIGHT BULB MOMENT
Internet shopping tycoon Holly Tucker
In 2006, Holly TuckEr, then aged 29, co-founded notonthehighstreet.com, an online marketplace for quirky gifts. Ten years later, the company turns over more than £130 million. Holly, who was awarded an MBE in June 2013, lives with her husband Frank and their son Harry, 11, in london.
BACK in 2004, farmers’ markets were really beginning to take off. Like most of my friends, I loved mooching around them at the weekend, but found it frustrating that they only sold food. I was looking for quirky Christmas presents — I didn’t want another jar of artisan chutney!
As a result I decided to launch Your Local Fair — a series of fairs in church halls around London that sold unique crafts and gifts from individual producers. They were a huge success, but I realised I needed a bigger marketplace to cater to small producers from all over the country. That was my lightbulb moment. I decided to create an online fair showcasing companies that consumers wouldn’t otherwise know about — the best of British small businesses.
Two years later, notonthehighstreet.
com was born. Like many start-ups, we were operating on a shoestring and there were hiccups along the way.
The worst was when it became clear our online shopping technology wouldn’t be ready for launch day. But we fixed the problem and from then on we went from strength to strength.
In the first few years, I worked 14 or 15-hour days. I felt it was my duty to capitalise on the momentum. I’m lucky that I thrive on stress, but my husband Frank and I had to make big personal sacrifices.
Frank has been supportive, even leaving his job to stay at home with our son because we wanted him to be raised with a parent around.
In the past ten years, our company has grown beyond my wildest dreams and I’m so proud of everything we’ve accomplished.
I was, and still am, tremendously passionate about championing small businesses, letting them know they matter, and giving them a global voice.
It’s not just the success of my own company that matters to me — small businesses are my passion and the backbone of the British economy. These days, more than 20 of
notonthehighstreet.com’s small producers make more than £1 million a year. I’m hugely proud of that and want to help keep those businesses thriving.
n Holly supports the Exporting Is Great campaign exportingis great. gov.uk.