Where did the idea for ekmPowershop.com come from and what does it involve?

ekmPowershop.com is a hosted ecommerce solution that allows anyone to build their own easy to use online shop. Potential customers visit www.ekmpowershop.com and pay us £19.99 per month, for that we effectively rent them an empty online shop which they can upload their own categories and products too. Its similar to renting a shop unit on the high street in that affect.

The shop owner has no contract which means that we need to ensure their online shop is a success if we are to continue to get the £19.99 per month rental fee. Because the system is online we are always upgrading and working on improvement for customers, so for example we can always ensure all online shops powered by ekmPowershop are using all the most recent search engine optimisation techniques.

Back in 2002 when I setup ekmPowershop.com their was only two choice for someone wanting to setup their own online shop. They could either pay a web designer several thousands of pounds to build them an ecommerce website and pay a monthly hosting fee. The other option was to buy some ecommerce software that enabled you to build your own online shop, this generally cost around a thousand pounds and you still needed to pay a monthly hosting fee and you needed alot of technical knowledge to setup and install the software on both your pc and your web server.

I thought there must be an easier way, surely people don't need a computer science degree to build an online shop?

So I set about creating ekmPowershop.com which would enable anyone to build an easy to use online shop no matter what their technical ability was. I also decided to build it to run over the internet, so the only thing you need to use ekmPowershop.com is a web browser. This was new back in 2002 but its all the rage now with companies like Google, Facebook and even Microsoft all offering Software as a Service (SaaS) business models just like we do.


After realising the amount of debt you were in did you ever get to a point where you felt like giving up and when did you see the signs that business was improving?

Once I started working on the company I had no job and no income so I had no choice but to live off credit cards and personal debt. You need money to get customers and you need customer to get money, I was in a vicious circle which carried on spirarling down moving me into over £25,000 worth of debt.

I often get asked if I was worried about having so much personal debt but to be honest I wasn't, in my head I couldn't fail and it was just a matter of time.

I tried to get various business support grants which were available at the time, including one called the Michelin Development fund in Burnley. They came to see my business along with a bank and looked through my business plan and told me that it would never work and to give up.

I didn't give up. I couldn't give up.

I carried on persevering for three long hard years until I had managed to get around 100 customers through cold calling myself. Once I had 100 customers each paying me £19.99 per month I had enough money to take on my first member of staff which enabled me to focus on growing the business even more.


How has your business expanded since its creation? What new clients do you have?

It took me three years to get 100 customers, we now get in excess of 500 new customers each month and the company had gone from strength to strength. We now employ over 35 people and ekmPowershop.com powers one out of every five online shops in the UK.

Over 17,000 online shops have been opened since ekmPowershop.com was launched and we have several well known clients such as Lotus Cars, ITV, PGA Golf, Madam Tussards, BBC and the O2.

Running ekmPowershop.com is great as you get to meet and talk to litterly thousands of people all setting up their first businesses, expanding their existing ones and of course the large multinationals trying to increase their online presence.

We have some great success stories of people who have setup their own businesses using ekmPowershop.com and have gone from a bedroom operation to a multi-million pound business. There is one customer who originally setup in his front room who turnsover in excess of £250,000 per month.


You have been named Enterprising Young Brit at an event in London - how does that make you feel?

I was very surprised to win the main award and feel very honoured. I got the award from Lord Mandleson who came in especially to present it to me.


What advice would you give to people who have put their all into a struggling business and feel like giving up?

Keep on persevering. I know far too many people who have given up too early on their own business. Its not easy, if it was everyone would be multi-millionaires and everyone would work for themselves.

Also dont be afriad to ask for help and advise, for example for all our customers we have a community forum called ekmCommunity.com where shop owners can log on and discuss various topics and concerns and get help from other shop owners. Its a great resource and it shows that the small business community will always work together to help each other.