As part of Bdaily’s featured week exploring retail, I heard from Martin Stanley, the founder of Cherish Home.
Martin explained that: “Cherish Home is an online retail business. We sell a range of household items, mainly small decorative items in the UK and Europe.
Martin’s business background has traditionally been in other areas, but after acquiring Tango Group (a personal green products wholesale business), Martin saw an opportunity to get into online retail. “Naturally, we got immersed in the process of buying and selling products and realized that we should explore the B2C model.
Jumping headfirst into the online retail industry has been a learning experience for the Cherish team. “We have learned a lot selling online through our own website and third-party marketplaces like Amazon and eBay. It’s a marketing challenge and people can only buy what they see on a listing. There is a lot of information that goes behind a listing to make it visible to the right audience.
“Unsurprisingly, one of the most challenging elements of online retail is competing on price. That’s becoming less of a concern as we move into branding our own products. We work with excellent suppliers and the benefits of ‘owning’ the brand are significant, although they occur at a higher level of risk and investment”.
Since Amazon is one of the largest online retail platforms, it made sense for Cherish Home to have an online presence there. However, this was not without its problems. Martin explained: “It is incredibly demanding to be a seller on the Amazon platform. They are the providers and you have to follow their rules and adapt to them when they change; that’s something all Amazon sellers deal with.
“That being said, other marketplaces just don’t come close to being able to provide the kind of demand you experience on Amazon. Now that we’re moving into private label products under Cherish Planet, we’re seeing new opportunities emerging on Amazon and it’s really interesting to learn how things intertwine behind the scenes since almost all of us invest time and money there. as consumers.”
With sustainability firmly on the agenda after COP27, it made perfect sense for Cherish to do the same. “I think it’s (sustainable product lines) incredibly important, but more importantly, we’re seeing consumers tell us it’s important. They tell us through their shopping habits. I would venture to say that products that are environmentally friendly and/or sustainably or ethically sourced are gradually becoming a consumer expectation.
“It’s just not good to have anymore and while higher prices for ‘good’ products used to be an inhibitor to consumers making a change, the onus has shifted so sharply to suppliers to make products more sustainable that we’re seeing that prices are coming. in terms relative to products that might not be so “good” in that sense. It is becoming easier to make products that have a lower impact on the environment, which is huge for our collective ability to move away from harmful single-use and disposable items.”
Martin seems optimistic about the future of Cherish Home, laying out what’s next for the company, commenting that “I see sustainability playing a huge role in how we move forward, and not just in homeware. Cherish Planet is a new offshoot of The Cherish Group with its own website and customer base. There we sell a wide range of energy efficient and eco lifestyle products, from solar powered garden lanterns to organic shaving soap.
“Our success will likely be determined by how well we develop our internal brands and the level of cohesion we can achieve in the combinations of our unique product packages, gift boxes, etc. It’s a really challenging but exciting time to be in that particular market.”
By adair brand – Correspondent, Bdaily
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