Hoxton Lights

I wanted to establish a retail business, leveraging my technology and marketing expertise. As i had a passion for property development and interiors, lighting seemed to be an obvious choice. With a price point range of 100 to 1000 GBP per unit, a reasonable range of product could be achieved with limited capital and margin per sale of around 25% meant that each sale would provide a satisfactory return.

There has been a change given that one of our key suppliers has decided to focus on direct to consumer sales and sales via retailers with physical premises. The loss of this supplier leaves a large gap in range which needs to be filled which will require significant effort the current owners are unable to commit at present. We can supply contacts for a number or suppliers who could be engaged by the new owner. If you already have supplier contacts then you will be able to rapidly recover this business and generate some value. The business is priced taking into account that some recovery work is required by the new owner.

There are 3 types of supplier as follows:

1. Dropship - whereby the supplier directly fulfils the orders. This is our preferred model. It means we don't have to stock or ship the order, Its just a case of ordering from the supplier and settling the invoice.

2. Stocked - we buy a limited amount of stock and store it in rented space. We ship the orders.

3. Order on demand. Some items are not stocked but ordered from suppliers when we receive an order. We then receive the item and reship it to the customer.

Returns may occur for any of the above and these go into the stock inventory.

Other activity includes, sourcing new product and onboarding new products to the website plus the usual book keeping, vat returns and other company admin.

Fundamental to growth of this business is the addition of more ranges. This is especially important and one supplier has recently withdrawn from the pure ecommerce retailer market leaving a gap in range.

It would be useful if the new owner had some experience in Lighting retail and was reasonably tech savvy. A passion for customer service would also help.