Watch Shop - Founder and ex-CEO

I started this business as a 27 year old, then sold out 7 years later at the age of 34 and effectively retired.

As seen on TV

I started this business as a 27 year old (initially starting it from my Father's jewellery shop in 2007), then sold out 7 years later at the age of 34. The company at one point was the UK's 14th fastest growing medium-size company (classified by over-doubling turnover every year from a base of at least £5M). It ended up shipping 1000s of watches per day out of a football pitch sized warehouse setup.

The business was acquired by Aurum, then owner of Watches of Switzerland and Goldsmiths. I was fortunate to get in the .com boom before Amazon monopolised nearly every ecommerce category.

I was the sole developer (LAMP) for WatchShop. I did not hire any other coders or engineers until the sale of the business. Whilst this was extremely efficient in terms of being able to make changes 24/7, knowing the code base inside out and unorthodoxly having £0 spend on tech, it created inertia when handing over the business - a double edged sword. However, without doing this any other way (i.e. hiring a tech team) would have required selling shares as the business could not be bootstrapped with tech on the balance sheet.

My most fortunate move was starting television advertising - this was the first TV advertised ecommerce Watch site, spending over £1 million per year on TV alone, producing revenues of over £40 million.

Company Awards
2018 eCommerce Watch Retailer of the year Online retail
2017 eCommerce Watch Retailer of the year Online retail
2016 Pureplay Top50 Ecommerce Retailers Online retail
2011 Ranked 53 in Sunday Times Fast Track 100 Sales
2010 Ranked 16 in Sunday Times Fast Track 100 Sales
2010 Shopzilla Circle of Excellence Awards Online retail

Wikipedia WatchShop
Visit site:Watch Shop