Entrepreneurial Lifeworld: Interview with Nick Bond, Blueberry CEO

This report presents an interview with Nick Bond, the CEO of Blueberry, an e-commerce platform specializing in personalized products. The interview covers various aspects of his entrepreneurial journey, including the inception of Blueberry, its business model, and its focus on customer satisfaction and social causes. Bond discusses the challenges of running a technology-driven business, the importance of building a strong team, and the impact of competition. He provides insights into his company's growth, marketing strategies, and financial aspects. Bond also shares his views on the biggest threats to small businesses in the UK, cost-saving tips, and how he differentiates his business from competitors like Amazon and eBay. The interview highlights the evolution of his business, the role of social media, and advice for aspiring entrepreneurs. The report further analyzes Bond's responses to provide valuable insights into the realities of entrepreneurship in the 21st century.

Interview
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Introduction
This interview with Nick Bond will give you careful insights about the mindsets of
entrepreneurs. Nick is the CEO of Blueberry; he discusses his company and also offers advice
for future entrepreneurs. Nick runs an e-commerce platform and helps different sellers to sell
their products. His platform is on top for selling personalised products to customers. He also
serves for social causes and encourages use of eco-friendly products. Life as a technology
entrepreneur is very challenging because of high competition and fast growth of technologies.
This is why we have Nick on board to help us with the challenges faced while running a business
from scratch.
Welcome Nick, Tell me about your current business? What you exactly do at Blueberry?
We are into the sales of customised and personalised products. We use the medium of
technology to reach customers and print personalised textiles and accessories on demand. We
also work socially and help in crowd funding. Our mission is to build an online platform that
empowers everyone to sell their own personalised products mainly textiles.
Customer satisfaction is the focus of our company as we aim to give best-personalised products
and services. Our start-up gives multiple opportunities to different sellers in the UK so that they
can market their products on our platform for free. We fairly understand the needs and demands
of our customers.
So what were you doing before this? Is this your first business?
Earlier I was freelance web design and worked at the University of London as a web developer. I
also went to get an MA in Arts. Designing and art was always my passion and I follow that still.
Combination of both of these aspects can be seen in our business. This is my first business.
Where is your business located?
Our business is headquartered in London, UK. Although for customer accessibility we provide
international deliveries.
When did you start the business?
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We started our business in 2015 and have been working on it. But we officially launched it in
2016.
And how many people does Blueberry currently employ?
We have a team of 25 people along with interns.
Where did you get the money for the start-up?
We have attained money by winning start-up competition.
How did you come up with this business idea?
I was working with a big corporation in designing and media. There I worked as a designing and
technical expert representative. I also helped in e-commerce sales and other platform
specifications. At that time I worked with many other small businesses and learnt about their
problems. The company used to sell clothes to the customers along with many other gift items
which were personalised. However, at that time personalisation was limited to gift items only.
Also, we had customers who would want designs inspired by different countries and expected
those trends in clothes.
At that time I came up with an idea of building an online platform by following the footsteps of
my previous company that could bring customizations in almost everything. Different categories
like family products, cake, animal products, sports, entertainment, hobby, job, procedures, names
and last names and food and beverages are involved. My company also targeted online marketers
with involvement in social media. I collaborated with different sellers across the globe to bring
their products at our platform.
How many customers do you have?
I am going, to be honest; I don’t know the exact number. But we are already running our
business since 2015 on our platform and we get new customers every hour. We have to keep
meetings every week to expand the scope of business. That is why giving an exact number at this
point is really hard as we are growing fast.
What are you concentrated on more right now? Is it sales, marketing, finance or scaling?
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What we are most at right now is about keeping the quality really high. On the side of the
company, we are trying to deliver products that meet the needs of customers and are of high
quality. This helps to give interesting products to customers all around the world. We have
customers and sellers coming from different regions of the world through a website and social
media. Therefore, our focus is to concentrate on web development to app development, we also
have Artificial Intelligence projects to support the different needs of our business.
Your company is pretty young, so how did you find those first customers? How do you
keep finding customers from different places of the world?
What's funny is that most of our first customers were generated through the exposure we got
when we won a start-up competition in California. And from there, a lot of people like dour ideas
and resonated to buy our products. We got feedback from them and now we are trying to attend
more such conferences and events and introduce our idea to more people across the world.
Tell us about your employees and how they work together?
I love my employees. They put across the best work and have the best bond. I have several small
departments including finance, human resources, supply and marketing. All of these are
interconnected with each other. They support each other and communicate strongly. It often
becomes a challenge to maintain a lean intelligent and motivated team of professionals that
understand the company's goals and achieve positive morale on the completion of goals.
What were some challenges you encountered when starting you didn’t anticipate?
There are numerous challenges that come your way in this entrepreneurial journey. It has been a
rollercoaster ride for me. All I can say is that building and maintaining a cohesive team while
respecting their individual style of working is a challenge. We are a business that has always
focused on the promotion of personal and professional growth while maintaining our business
known for great customization and services. At times, it becomes difficult to maintain a balance
between these two.
What do you think is the biggest threat to the success of small businesses in the UK today?
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I believe that it is the failure of our elected officials to understand that small business in the UK
is the backbone of the economy. It is estimated that small businesses in the UK are found to
create at least 80 per cent of the jobs. Therefore, it makes sense for legislators to focus on
supporting the needs and foundations of the country’s economic forces. Moreover, the economy
in the UK is in a slump so it is essential to encourage small business.
Considering the above, what cost-saving tips would have for a new entrepreneur?
I would suggest them to focus on the main elements of the business and recognize profitable
products and services. Making the manufacturing process efficient can do wonders for them.
Next, it is essential to understand the customers, their needs and align resources to enhance
success and growth. This strategy will help them to stay profitable in tough economic times.
These customers will become their tool of promotion and will bring new business prospects for
them.
Who are your main competitors? How do you compete against them?
Our business is prone to high competition not only in the UK but across the globe as well. Our
main competitors are Amazon, eBay, Yahoo! Stores, Shopify and so on. However, we do not
worry about these big chains as we focus on listening to what our customers are telling us from
the data we gain from the surveys. We immediately react to their feedback and work on them. I
think that is an advantage that small firms get over the big chains.
In order to compete against them, we use the power of differentiation. We have built a unique
online platform that has a variety of features. Plus the cost of our products as you can see is very
low. Our simple user-interface, social media features, a variety of products from different sellers
across the world helps us a lot. As a result, we gain access to in-built marketing tools and provide
customers with personalized support.
How has your experience in running the business been different from what you expected?
The business world in the online and e-commerce and platforms are constantly changing and one
cannot expect what we plan today, will lead exactly the same results next day. The way our
products have been envisioned now is very different from what we planned back earlier. We
have gone through a number of unsuccessful good ideas throughout this process. Working in
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today’s cutting edge environment is not easy because what you think today, after 2 years down
the line it might become outdated. It is safe to say that once we have a clear vision of what we
want, we can turn it into a reality.
We did not expect such velocity of growth and it was very challenging for us. All I can say is
that rapid growth is a wonderful problem to have which strains each function and system of the
company. Also, I expected some decisions to be more calculated than reality. In our company
our leadership teams meet every for 3-4 hours and analyse the internal and external data to take
important decisions for our company. This team has good leadership experience which is helpful
for Blueberry. We work hard to ensure that we do not compromise excellence. So far, we have
had great success in running the business in this way. But again it is not a straight path and it is
much harder than what I had expected.
Is there anything that you wish you had done differently?
There are two main things which we could have done to speed up our success. Our first step
would have been to identify a niche market and develop products that meet their needs exactly.
We would have solved their problems and give high-quality and unique products. The market
which we operate today is very big and is a bit difficult for us to handle in a small budget and
team. With a small budget and team our processes and target market often gets restricted but
having a niche market could have helped us to forget the worries of finances.
The other thing which we could have done differently is to remember that we need to walk
properly before we began to run. In other words, I believe that first, we need to build a simple
and easy product version that is easy to understand by the public. It is first essential to make the
audience understand about our organic and eco-friendly products and then add more
sophisticated features and take our services on from there. This is also our aim to give
sophisticated features to our clients so that they can choose easily what exactly they are looking
for. After this, in our head, we have the plans to add more features and slow things a bit.
We are familiar that social media marketing is consistently being written regarding the
small business space. Has it worked generating business for you?
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Yes, that is true. I remember when we didn’t have enough funds in starting to invest in
advertisements and media. This is where social media came to our rescue. Social media is a
convenient and economical way of marketing and reaching customers. It also acts as a platform
for communication. Social media has helped us significantly to attract customers for our
products. The major products sold over social media are customised printed T-shirts. Facebook is
the major contributor to our business for driving traffic.
What have you done so far to help in increasing the growth of the business?
Since we are a small business with a small budget, we are focused on using the cheapest
marketing strategies possible. It is actually helping us save big amounts which we can use in
different places. We believe in word-of-mouth, referrals, viral publicity, and blog postings and
optimized SEO. Major proportion around 95 per cent of the marketing has been done online and
we found this as a cost-effective method. We also make efforts to connect with our real
customers as people so that they can understand the motive behind our business. We note
feedbacks from the customers and appreciate their suggestions. I remember an instance when a
customer told us that they would like to see some handcrafted articles from India in the
collection. We are working on this and will soon partner with Indian merchants to bring their
products to reach the audience. I feel that people like when they see their ideas implemented and
when our customers are happy, they tell this to their friends.
That’s really great. Does your business in any way to help the communities and
environment?
Yes, we as a start-up make sure to be completely ethical and responsible in all the things we do.
Our business also acts as a platform for raising funds for charity and other social causes. Our
platform is also available for sellers to sell their products without any costs. As our company is
involved in the manufacturing of apparels and other products we aim for zero emissions. Also,
our products are totally recyclable and organic. This helps us to preserve the earth and its
resources.
What’s next for your company?
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What we are now planning to do is scale. This is because we want our products to reach larger
audiences and sellers. Next year will be big for us as we expect that we have generated enough
interest for the media events as well as the sellers.
The biggest obstacle that is ahead of us is staffing. So we are inviting any one of us who is
willing to work for us. That was a joke by the way. We are staffing internationally in order to
operate at different places from London to Canada to India. We are trying to get the best people
on board. Our success is bound on the quality of products and we will not be satisfied with
anything less than that.
You are planning to hire employees from different countries. What can be the possible
challenges for you?
I do have experience of working with diversified teams in my previous organisation. However, it
often becomes tough to build an inclusive culture where different people work together. This is
because of differences in cultures, religions, language, age and so on. We are going to hire a
workforce from different places in order to understand our customers in a better way. In order to
overcome these challenges, we have made policies that prohibit discrimination based on culture,
gender, ethnicity, disability, and sexual orientation and so on while we also plan to have talent
acquisition and retention strategies for our workforce.
Have you done any outsourcing in your business? How far this has helped you?
Yes, a couple. We did outsourcing for activities like SEO, delivery of products and supply of raw
materials for business. However, there is a variety of stuff that I do by myself in a quick and
efficient way. When these tasks become profitable I outsource some tasks. This helps me
increase efficiency and timeline of work as some other person takes the responsibility to do it for
me.
Do you believe in hiring freelance workforce?
I already work with many freelancers, but as I grow I guess that my entire workforce is going to
be freelance workforce rather than traditional employees. This is a good thing for my business as
it helps me to scale my business and work in lean budget.
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So you have a lot of people that are joining the team. Do you use any specific team
management technique?
Yeah, actually, we have been a doing a number of strange things throughout. In our job
interviews, we can be found talking 95 per cent of the time. This is as the first thing we want to
do is pitch our business idea and drive to you and ascertain if you understand it and the overall
passion of the company. Our main aim is to achieve a passion to achieve our objectives.
In this phase, people often get confused as they did not expect us to talk that much so they be
like, what is happening here?. But it is a good way for us to introduce employees to our idea and
passion that we are trying to have in our company.
What advice would you give to someone else who wishes to start a similar business?
The best thing that I have learned so far in this journey is that, while you plan to run a business
you must solve your own problem. When we have some problem it is certain that someone else
also has the same problem. Also, it is important to find your niche from the inception of business
and it should be something that you are passionate about. I am saying this because you are going
to spend a lot of money and efforts on it so you have to love what you are doing in order to make
it worthwhile for the audiences.
So all those who are having ideas, do not waste time thinking on it and just do it today. Just dive
in and get started and you will overcome the biggest hurdle. Getting started will help you learn a
lot.
That is a piece of great advice, Nick. Thank tons for sharing your experiences and
entrepreneurial story. Good luck with your business.
Conclusion
From this interview of Nick, we get to understand a variety of dimensions associated with
entrepreneurship and challenges that come in the way. There are a wide number of aspects that
need to be considered and issues to be dealing with. These insights help us to discover the inside
of the world of an entrepreneur and what it takes to scale a business from an idea to a business.
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Moreover, it is also essential to think out of the box and convert ideas into realities despite all the
shortcomings.
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