It's good to see a UK success story, with figures that are more down to earth than the likes of Facebook. There really is space for all sorts of internet businesses, provided they capture the public's imagination with both name and offering.
Founded in 2000, and named after the founder's school nickname, their history makes interesting reading. They "moved to Guernsey in 2006 in order to benefit from the island's VAT exemption on UK-bound goods costing less than £18". Worth remembering!
Now as it happens Camwells has its 17th birthday tomorrow, 31st August. In fact the work started on Bank Holiday Monday, implementing a system to double client's profits. On our tenth birthday a whole host of stuff arrived congratulating us for reaching that milestone. Nothing since. So what a good chance to test Moonpig out sending a birthday card to myself. (how Beanish!). Pity the email that can optionally be sent in parallel won't be sent until the 2nd September, with no apparent way of sending it now or tomorrow.
With a fee of only £3.49, including postage, this poses a real challenge for handling the payment, as transaction fees can make this size of charge uneconomic. As I mentioned in a recent article, PayPal are just launching a new micropayments service. It will be interesting to see if Moonpig uses it.
The history also includes the phrase "shows a typical curve for a successful start-up — a big, £1 million loss establishing it in its first year, negligible losses edging into negligible earnings over the next six years, and thereafter a seven-figure profit"
So how can this be short-cutted to reach 7 figures profit by boot-strapping, without the earlier losses? I had my own "lightbulb" moment when I woke this morning, but any suggestions gratefully received ...do leave a comment....
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And here's the result ...
ReplyDeletehttp://bit.ly/bcard17
And the card arrived a couple of days later, looking just like it does in the link above.
ReplyDeleteI nearly went out to a restaurant on my own and put it on the table. Mr Bean would have been very proud! But it was a few days too late.