‘i came up With £1 million idea on my sofa’
Gill Sherwin, 43, lives in Cheshire with her husband will, 53, and their daughter Kate*, seven. Gill set up Best of British Beer in July 2011. now she has partnerships with notonthehighstreet.com, Funky Pigeon and waitrose.
Light-bulb moment
Working as an operations director I was often away from home. After Will and I got married in June 2008, I wanted to be more settled. I started brainstorming ideas in my living room. I thought about opening a shop, but I didn’t think it’d be a big enough challenge, so I looked into selling online – something I could grow worldwide. Will and I were always trying new ales, and then I discovered you couldn't buy great British beer online...
First steps
After convincing Will to leave his job in operations, we invested £20,000 of our savings. We asked a design agency to create a website and travelled to breweries. We discovered people didn’t want to buy crates of the same beer – they’d much rather a variety. That’s when we came up with the idea of offering gift sets.
The launch
In September 2011, we approached notonthehighstreet.com to partner up. It cost us £700 to join but as our customer base expanded, we needed more stock and a month later we rented out our first warehouse. Two years later we started making gift sets for Selfridges and Waitrose. We now own a warehouse and in the last financial year made £1 million – it really was a ‘pinch me’ moment.
Biggest challenge
I soon realised that doing everything yourself isn’t easy. Not only did I have to look after the website and learn all about SEO, but I also had to handle any glitches and all the finances – a lot of pressure. ✱
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