Alex Rae
27
Trainershack.co.uk
Online retailer of trainers and clothing
July 2005
Throughout school, my aim was to get into retail management. After finishing my A Levels I joined John Lewis on their management training scheme. After managing departments there I later moved on to store management with clothing retailer Westworld.
I spent six years running other people’s businesses before taking the plunge and making sure every pound I made was for me.
We sell trainers and a small amount of clothing through our website. We focus on rare and hard to find trainers but also retail the latest designs. The selling points we focus on are fast and free postage and undercutting High Street prices by up to 50%.
I’ve always had lots of business ideas and at school I was always trying to make money in some way, from selling chewing gum to printing business stationery for local firms. There are other plans I am working on at the moment after gaining the confidence from my first business venture.
The idea of selling trainers comes from my own passion for the product. I sourced a supplier and gave the idea a trial run by selling on an online auction site. After this went well, I started transferring the business over to my purpose built site.
My own Dad and my fiancé’s Dad, both having their own business, were great inspirations. Also speaking to a family friend, who owns a company formation and web design company, gave me further inspiration along with practical help.
By starting selling on an auction site I could see that there was obviously lots of demand for the product out there. I also knew that I had a vast target audience because of the versatility of trainers.
Like I said, the first thing I did was dipping my toes in the water by selling through an auction site. The next step was to form the company, going through the usual processes involved such as setting up business banking, registering with Companies House and Revenues & Customs etc. Following this I began to build the website.
As I was going to trade solely online, most of my research was done on the net looking at competitor’s sites to see what they were offering and to see if I could do a better job or find a niche.
I also had to find suppliers to buy my stock from and as I was completely new to running my own business, I had to spend days looking through exciting information about taxation, VAT, business insurance etc.
As well as gaining advice from my family and other business owners I knew, I drew on a lot of knowledge from a family friend whose business is company formations. This was very useful and I was able to sort much of the start up requirements through him. I also approached my local enterprise agency to see if there was any funding or training available to me.
I spoke to Business Eye Wales, a free phone support service for businesses, who pointed me in the right direction of where to get extra training, where to find suppliers and various other questions that I needed answering.
They put me in touch with a local workshop called Cyber Skills who were able to do an evaluation of my website, give me further pointers and arrange free IT training. All valuable stuff as I was doing everything myself without the help of a designer.
There are grants out there available but unfortunately not for every business. We needed a small grant in order to invest in some necessary IT and marketing. However, because of constraints against us such as the location and nature of our business, and what we wanted the money for, there was no available funding for us.
It is much easier for a well established manufacturing company to get tens of thousands to buy plant than for a small business such as mine to get a few hundred to help us get off the ground.
The government seriously needs to take a look at the restrictions it places on companies that need money to start up as well as simplifying the process of applying for grants.
I searched on the net to find some examples of existing business plans, and used the template given to me by our bank. I decided that the template included everything that I would want to have written down, as well as being an “approved” document used by the bank when asking for funding.
One thing I have learned about writing a business plan is that it needs to be updated fairly regularly, especially when you are in a seasonal/fashion orientated business. The main goals have remained the same and I have always found that transferring ideas from my head to paper is invaluable, however the business plan isn’t used regularly.
The bulk of my start up costs went on stock and software, and the total came to around £5,000.
I funded the start up mainly from my own savings and a redundancy settlement I received from my previous employer.
After being unable to obtain any government funding I went to the bank and obtained a small business loan. This too was difficult as I didn’t have any history with the bank I had chosen to use for my business banking.
My back up plan would be to sell off any remaining stock by going back to using an auction site. Although the overheads are higher doing it this way, it is a lot easier to reach your customer base.
