Celebrating its 12th birthday this month, online beauty products
retailer BeautyBay.com is forecasting record turnover for 2011 of
£10 million. The Manchester-based firm has seen year-on-year
growth of almost 80 percent thanks to a recent redesign of its
website, investment in larger offices and warehouse space and
adoption of new online technologies and innovations.
The profitable business had sales of £6 million last year
and is “cash rich and debt-free”, says founder and
managing director David Gabbie. But it’s not always been plain
sailing, “originally trading as Fragrancebay.com, the idea
behind the site was to provide a popular repurchase product at a
cost lower than traditional bricks and mortar stores,” says
Gabbie. “The internet was all about value in those days and
we struggled. In fact, turnover in the first 6 months was just
£30,000,” he adds.
In 2004, Gabbie opened an outlet in a shopping centre in
Ashton-under-Lyne but the centre suffered a fire just before the
store opened. As a result of this disastrous foray into retail,
in 2005, the business rebranded as BeautyBay.com and was
refocused online.
Last year, BeautyBay moved from Bury to larger premises in
Trafford Park, Manchester, investing in 40,000 sq-ft of
warehousing and office space and 60,000 sq-ft of overflow space
dedicated to growth in the next few years.
Also in 2010, the company redesigned its website with a cleaner
look and feel, mega menus to help customers navigate to the exact
brand or product desired, and slideshows. As well as an overall
enhancement to the usability of the site, the new design helped
improve organic SEO too. The next step, says Gabbie, is making
more technological advancements, the biggest of which is a new
website platform. Gabbie says the business has a huge wish list
of what it would like implemented on the new site and has
narrowed the search to a few suppliers. However, he’s not ruled
out building the site in-house yet.
Once the new platform is in place, BeautyBay will start to
increase its international activity. Although it already ships
worldwide and has a multicurrency website catering for
transactions in US dollars, euros, Danish kroner, Norwegian
kroner, and Swedish kronor, Gabbie says local-language websites
are planned to take full advantage of new markets. “Why
would a French or Italian customer buy from a website in
English?” he says. “If you’re going to enter a new
market, you have to adapt.” International sales currently
account for less than 20 percent of turnover, but have great
potential for growth, says Gabbie.
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