I have been the client, which changes the advice
Fifteen years running technology inside retail businesses, latterly as IT Director of a recommerce operation handling over 200 million units a year, through to its sale at £165m.
Why work this way
I take on a small number of clients and do the work myself.
I have sat on the buying side of a lot of agency relationships. The pattern that frustrated me was consistent: the person who understood the problem in the sales meeting was never the person who did the work, and by the third month I was explaining my own business back to a junior developer.
So the arrangement here is deliberately narrow. I take on a small number of clients, I do the work myself, and when I am not the right person I say so on the first call rather than three weeks into a discovery phase.
The trade is that I cannot scale. If you need eight people on a project next month, this is not the right fit, and I will usually know who is.
- Scale
- 200m+ Units a year processed on platforms I ran as IT Director at World of Books.
- Growth
- 1% to 55% Share of £120m group turnover moved to the direct channel I built, from £100k to £4.7m a month.
- Proof
- £1.5m Turnover at Audio Trader within two years of founding, on a platform I built.
Where that came from
Roles rather than a list of technologies. The technologies changed several times over that period, which is rather the point.
- 2019 to 2024
IT Director, World of Books
Ran technology for a recommerce operation processing over 200 million units a year, through to a sale at £165m enterprise value. Warehouse systems, pricing, marketplace integrations and the ecommerce estate.
- 2014 to 2019
Head of Ecommerce and Technology
Multi-channel retail. Replatforming, ERP integration and the unglamorous work of making stock figures true across four sales channels.
- 2010 to 2014
Developer, then lead
Building the systems rather than directing them. Still the reason I read a supplier quote differently from someone who has only ever bought development.
The practical detail
The questions that come up on every first call.
- Based
- Worthing, West Sussex. Client sites across the south east in person, anywhere in the UK otherwise.
- Typical client
- Online retailer turning over £5k to £50m, usually with a small internal team.
- Commitments
- No commission from any platform, agency or app. If I recommend something, it is because it is right, not because it pays.
- Availability
- Usually two to four weeks out for new work, sooner for an audit or a second opinion.