Specialising in homeware products, Amy Knight started the business from her spare room in Rochester in 2018.
The rise of one of the fastest growing e-commerce companies in the UK is evident from the moment you enter reception at Must Have Ideas — a real-time orders ticker continually flicks over towards the 9 million barrier as I wait for Amy Knight, the homeware product specialist’s co-founder and director.
Having launched in 2018 with a hygienic sponge, the Kent-based company today has a product range over 200 and dispatches more than 9,000 orders daily.
Its three co-founders started with £3,000 and had a stringent £20 advertising budget for social media videos they produced themselves. Spool forward seven years and the firm now spends £2m monthly on Meta (META) ads.
It is money well invested too, with the firm's recent revenue figures nudging towards £70m.
“I thought it would be a lifestyle business but the growth got away from us and we are trying to keep up,” says Knight.
The 28-year-old had originally trained as a lawyer, working full-time as a warehouse manager for Ecoegg, an eco-friendly cleaning and household goods business, alongside her law degree studies at University of Kent.
Knight left Ecoegg having moved up as head of operations and sensing a business opportunity. Leaving her law degree behind, she watched YouTube videos and read Facebook groups and articles on digital marketing.
Must Have Ideas now has thousands of regulars heading to its shopping website and TV channel.
“I quite liked the idea of going into business but there wasn't a massive desire to be a lawyer,” Knight admits.
Together with her husband Rob, who co-founded Ecoegg, and a former colleague Chris Finch, the trio each invested £1,000 and filmed their first “embarassing” sponge advert on a mobile phone, with Knight as the actress in her kitchen.
“We didn’t have any more money to put in. We were unemployed and living off savings,” says Knight.
“I had a car on Personal Contract Purchase (PCP) that I had to give back as the balloon payment had gone. I’m not sure what we would have done if we hadn't sold the sponges. We just hoped it would work.”
However, the product quickly sold out. “We realised that the more product we added, the faster the business grew,” admits Knight. “Even now it’s all trial and error and it’s something we swear by that if we aren't testing [700 pieces of social media content per month are published] we are doing something wrong.”
Knight, listed on Forbes 30 Under 30’s e-commerce category in 2023, says her retired police officer parents both backed their daughter’s move into business.
“They didn’t give much opinion and they may have been worried it wouldn’t work out but they have always been very supportive,” she says.
Amy Knight is owner and director of the leading UK e-commerce retail company generating £65m in turnover.
“Because they’ve been in the police they’ve always been in the public sector. The whole business world has been unknown to them but I think they’re proud now.”
From her spare room in Rochester, Must Have Ideas has grown into a 40,000-square-foot warehouse employing 170 staff, with a range of company perks including a free car wash every month.
Knight says that its custom-built AI software, called Spark, has been the catalyst for powering up growth and which “runs the entire business”.
This includes Must Have Idea’s own TV shopping channel, which launched last year and stitches together production, as well as running the firm’s helpdesk, website and managing deliveries and buying reports.
“It’s been huge and one of the best things we’ve done as a business,” she adds. “We are a data driven and tech-focused business and were tired of using tech that didn’t work for the business. Pretty quickly we developed Spark and it means that teams are not using workarounds.”
Must Have Ideas now has its own in-house TV studio, which steams online and broadcasts on Sky.
There have been challenges in the company’s rise. With most of its products manufactured in China, the company saw shipping container costs spiral during the COVID pandemic from £1,500 to £18,000 while Knight admits last year’s budget “kind of felt like we were being hit from all angles”.
The three co-founders, who now have six children between them and Knight a mother of two, have adopted a second tier of management into the company, hiring heads of products and acquisition, and allowing the trio to focus on wider aspects of business growth.
The e-commerce company’s “big focus” is to be a £100m business, with Knight bullish that the milestone can be achieved within the next two years.
“I would love for us to be a brand people think to go to for a solution,” she adds.
“For us it’s about making everyday life easier with problem-solving solutions, problems that you didn’t even know you had until we showed you an ad.
“It’s about discovering new products and clever solutions that you won’t find elsewhere. If you find them on the end of the aisle at Tesco (TSCO.L) it’s not for us.”
It is these discoveries that have kept the order tracker working overtime and hundreds more orders taken when I exit reception 90 minutes later.
