However, just two years later she had cleared her debt entirely, having made her first million at the age of 23.
Now the mum is set to turnover £60 million by the end of next March, having made close to £10m, since the start of April.
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The secret to the 27-year-old mum’s success? An idea she cooked up at her kitchen table.
Amy, who has two daughters under five, set up Must Have Ideas with business partners Chris Finch and husband Rob Knight, in August 2018 each putting £1,000 into the business.
Must Have Ideas was inspired by their management roles at Ecoegg, which sold products for the home, through shopping channels such as QVC, with the trio setting up the business in 2018 when their old company sold.
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When Amy joined Ecoegg as a warehouse assistant, while studying law at the University of Kent, she never imagined rising to become a warehouse manager, then its head of supply chain, before leaving to run her own business.
She worked a minimum of 40 hours a week while studying and earned around £35,000 a year.
“My attendance at uni wasn’t amazing,” admitted Amy.
“My lectures were recorded and so I watched them before and after work.”
Having a full-time job meant Amy didn’t need to take out a loan to cover living expenses.
She did take out a loan to cover her tuition fees though and paid it off soon after launching Must Have Ideas.
Eager to spread the word of their company, Amy taught herself to advertise her brand on social media by watching YouTube.
Speaking exclusively to Fabulous, Amy says: “We set our ads, which were mainly one minute videos, live on Facebook at 6am on the day we launched the business, in August 2018..
“I remember sitting down eating lunch and thinking ‘are we going to sell anything?’”
Then minutes after she posed that question they sold their first product – an Hygiene Hero, which is an antibacterial sponge for washing up.
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“We felt incredibly excited and relieved, as the sale made us feel that we can actually do this,” she says.
Must Have Ideas has gone on to enjoy many more milestones since that first sale.
In February 2019 the business sold £10,000 worth of products ( around 400 orders), in one day – exactly six months after their first sale.
“We were on a plane heading to a trade show in Germany when this happened and I remember getting really excited because 10,000 felt like a big number, a real milestone,” recalls Amy.
Must Have Ideas’s first year of trading ended on a high, thanks to a healthy turnover of half a million pounds with the figure doubling to £1million at the end of the business’s second year of trading.
In August 2021, three years after Must Have Ideas began trading it enjoyed a major milestone, when it sold £100,000 pounds worth of goods in one day.
Amy, who was featured on Forbes 30 under 30 list of top retail and online entrepreneurs, revealed that the secret to the success of Must Have Ideas is listening to their customers.
“Our entire business is incredibly data driven, with extensive dashboards in different areas of our warehouse to monitor what is selling and what is not selling,” she explains.
“It’s getting harder to secure sales by advertising on Facebook and Instagram, so we have to work harder and get better, by constantly testing videos, trying new ideas and finding out what resonates with customers.
“Knowing our data and learning what is working and not working, so we can get better at selling, is key to our success.”
She adds: “As a business we focused on being profitable from the first order and first month, when we had a turnover of £3,000, by the end of it.”
Amy says that building up a strong relationship with customers has been the key to her business’ success.
“When the business started up, people didn’t know if they could trust us enough to deliver the product they ordered, but we worked hard to win their trust by providing a freephone number, from day one, so that they could ring us if they needed to,” she says.
“We also provided a picture on our home page of our families, to show that we are a family
business.”
This strategy not only increased sales, but eventually led to over 100,000 TrustPilot reviews on the business.
Getting the right staff is also key to the success of the business, says Amy, whose 135 part-time and full-time staffers range from dispatch assistants to customer service reps and copy writers to video editors.
“I’ve found that it’s important to hire people based on attitude rather than skills, because skills can be taught, but attitude can’t.”
Must Have Ideas’s best selling products include Nanna’s Secret Cleaning Clay – a natural clay product which thoroughly cleans and shines stainless steel sinks and Better Brush –a rubber broom which doesn’t leave anything behind.
Amy Knight’s business tips
For anyone eager to experience the highs and lows of running a business, follow Amy’s three top tips, which are:
- Understand your customer, so that you can provide the products or service they need.
- Build a business focused on what you love.
- Hire people based on attitude rather than skills, since skills can be taught, butattitude can’t.
Seeking new products to sell to new and existing customers is a priority for Amy and her business partners.
And expanding the business to the US and parts of Europe is part of their future plans.
Aside from money making one of the biggest perks of Amy’s job is being able to be her own boss.
She adds: “I enjoy the flexibility.
“If my two daughters need me at home, I can be there for them without asking permission from a boss, because I am the boss.”
But, of course, it doesn’t come without its challenges.
She says: “You don’t get to switch off because you’re always worrying about it; it’s like a third child!”
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