Jan Cavelle's Formula for Spotting Market Gaps and Creating Profitable Ventures

Hello and welcome to this episode of The Unnoticed Entrepreneur. And I'm really, really excited because we've got an amazing story, an amazing lady who's built a business over 20-odd years, built it from a kitchen table into a brand, a multi-million pound brand that she could sell. And Jan Cavell is joining me from Sussex in the southeast of England. Jan, welcome to the show.

Jim, thank you so much. I'm thrilled to be here.

Well, I'm thrilled because your story is inspiring on so many levels. And you're gonna tell us really how necessity meant that you were a pioneer of dropshipping and how you defined an avatar, not through some fancy sort of workshop, but just really through practical mother's needs. But you built one of the country's leading furniture suppliers to businesses and were able to sell it 20-odd years later. So, Jan, wonderful story. Coming on to you, Jan, tell us a little bit about the business that you built, and then we'll talk about some of those other learnings we can all take from you.

Surely, Jim, I'd be delighted to. Uh, the business I built was, as you say, very much out of necessity. I was a single mom and I had these 2 young children. I knew virtually nothing about business, but I had got bits and pieces of sales experience. So I scratched my head and I thought, what can I do that will enable me to feed my children, which was a very urgent thing, and that will keep me at home? And it struck me that therefore buying something in and selling it out— certainly hadn't heard of dropshipping at that point in time— but buying something in, selling it out would be a good thing to do, and preferably it never hitting the house because we didn't have much room to start with. And then I thought, what I don't want to do is have customers at the door because with small children that sort of interference would be horrendous. And equally with my sales experience, I'd got some degree of business-to-business experience, recruitment for example, where you or selling people— sorry if I'm going to be cruel to recruiters, but roughly— or selling the services to people and getting a fee for it. And therefore, you've got, hopefully, if you do a good job, you've got people coming back all the time. And that struck me as very, very sensible. You know, I had limited ways of making money. If they were going to buy from me once and buy from me again, then that was going to be a helpful thing. So I thought about that, and then I thought, who could I sell to and what could I sell? And I was in East Anglia at a point in time, there were lots of craftsmen around, so I thought crafty things. And I knew a bit about the interior design industry, a little bit, a little bit about furniture. And so I thought, that's, that's certainly one option, and I can see bits and pieces. would go, but would it be enough? Would it actually keep us regularly in food? And I thought about this a bit more, and I thought, you know, along this regular business route, what are they actually needing? What would make their lives easier? What is their problem in supply of bits and pieces that they need? Because of course, people like designers are often selling on to somebody else. So they just want to do a good job and to have that done for them as easily as possible. And I felt instinctively there might be a gap in the market for supplying interior designers with things on a regular basis. And if they knew if they could have them over and over again from me, whatever it was, of any size and description, Then they would come to the same person each time, hopefully. And that was the sort of principle that evolved. And it was very much feeling my way over making my life easier, something that would suit my lifestyle and design a customer to match, if you like.

Yeah, Jan, I love that. And, you know, we're talking about the 1990s here when you did that. And, you know, I was also just coming out of university then. I mean, we were all Pre-internet. So for anyone listening now, it seems like, well, you, of course, you can find things on Amazon and you could do dropshipping and you could put it onto Etsy and charge a premium, right? But you were doing this from a kitchen with a 4 and a 7-year-old, if I'm not mistaken, Jan. So let's just break that down. How did you then, first of all, start to approach those— customers, those businesses? And interested you chose businesses instead of consumers because they have repeat need, which is very smart of you. How did you approach them? Because there you are kind of turning up offering to be an intermediary because they could go and find those products themselves. Why would they come to you?

Well, this was it. I mean, we needed, or I needed, should I say, because it was just me. So it's a little pompous saying we at that stage. And it was a question of really Cutting their work down somehow. And that was where I felt the more I could supply them with, the more problems I could solve. And the flexibility of my suppliers would come into play, because if they could get a bedside table in white from me and get an oak dining room table from me, They would just go tick, tick, tick and use me for as much as possible. It didn't quite work like that, but it started definitely giving me an edge of ease. And as people got to trust for reliability and of delivery and service, and like, and make it, you know, it was important to make it a pleasure that they dealt with you as well. And so, you know, became, became a better experience for people to use me rather than to go shopping.

Jen, I love that. You've got a few things in there. First of all, I'd love to talk about what did you use? Because in pre-internet days, you'd have to go out and visit companies. And, you know, I used to work in a company selling food to Tesco's and Sainsbury's and so on. And you had to go and visit key account managers. Tell us, how did you sort of package all the products? Because actually, we still need to learn that skill. What you're talking about really is essential business skills.

Well, there was certainly no skill involved at the start, I can assure you.

You're being very modest.

Yeah, I sketched up some bits and pieces as a trial basis. I could not afford any prototypes, I had no cash, and I had a tiny little gap on my credit card left and persuaded a printer to do me a short run of these awful, awful brochures, but they gave me something to send out to people. And at the time, as I say, being extremely cashless, I was getting a little bit of Income Support. And when I went and cashed my Income Support in, I would buy one Yellow Pages in those days, because of course there was no internet to research potential clients. So one trade directory every week, and then I would hit the phones and I would ring furniture companies, interior designers, furniture shops, anybody who might buy work was in those lists in the trade directories every week.

Jan, that is impressive. So you were designing your own brochures, going out. What about at the other end of the equation, these craftspeople, these providers of the products? How did you approach those and do the sourcing?

Well, it was, you know, difficult. They're small suppliers. They weren't— they were beautiful craftsmen, many of them, but at the time, I don't know if you remember, but it was probably about the time of Lawrence Llewellyn Bowen and Changing Rooms, and suddenly there were colour in houses, and people were considering buying things which weren't the, you know, sort of repro furniture that was around on every high street. But equally, not only were quite a lot of the shops resistant to the idea of anything that wasn't a repro traditional and hadn't been sold for 50 years, but actually the craftsmen were very resistant to it too. You know, and you'd say, would you like to make something in MDF for me? And, you know, I'll get it finished and sprayed. We're not doing that, tap. You know, what do you want to do that for? I'll make you a nice oak table. You know, and it was quite tricky to match contemporary needs to craftsmen locally. But, you know, a few of them took the plunge. To some extent, the nice thing about that setup is that suppliers have nothing to lose. You're not asking them to make anything for free. You're only going to go to them when you've got an order. So, you know, it's— the brighter ones see that it's a moderately win-win.

Yeah. Okay. So that's perfect. Just for those of us not in the trade, MDF, what does that stand for?

Medium density fiberboard. It's the sort of smart version of chipboard.

Right. So fantastic.

Yeah. So very good to paint.

So you were basically getting people to be on standby and not hold stock.

Exactly.

And this was the point about it being really a precursor to what we now call dropshipping, where you were really arbitraging or broking between a customer and not building anything until it needed to be made.

Which is a great way of doing business if you've got no capital, which was exactly my problem.

Yeah, but I love how you've managed to turn necessity into a business model, Jan. That's— I mean, you're very humble about it, very modest about it. Um, and so you did mention earlier on as well a couple of things about how you identified what customers would look for and that you wanted it to be a pleasure for them to do business with you. I'd love for you to expand more on that because in this day and age of You know, the internet where people are not meeting a Jan Kavell in their showroom, for example, or in their offices. How have you— how do you define making doing business with you and your business a pleasure?

Well, this came down very much to telephone sales because, of course, I couldn't go and meet people. I didn't have the cash for one thing, either for transport or for babysitters or one thing or another. And it just, it was too big a gamble. At that point in time, you know, to take a train or drive to Glasgow on the off chance of making an order. I just couldn't do it. So it had to be phone. And, you know, that was very much a question of perseverance. In essence, it was hard selling because I was just cold calling, then telephone chatting and selling this thing which they hadn't seen. It's very hard to sell a product which they can't touch. But I did it by perseverancing, if you like, with the telephone sales. And I never hard pushed it. I would talk to them and build up a relationship and find out a bit more each time. I have copious notes about everybody. Find out more about their family, more about their needs, more about their business. Never push it. And say, you know, I'll give you another ring in 2 or 3 months. And sometimes it would take me 4 or 5 calls. before eventually they would say, I tell you what, I'm stuck on— could you help me out? Yeah, absolutely, I'd be delighted to. But it was all about relationship developing, which most people didn't, didn't, and indeed still don't do in telephone sales. And I got sufficiently good at it— which is wincing because I don't like saying I'm good at anything, as you've gathered—

Yeah.

But the people would say, oh, lovely, see you again next time you're in. And I would have never, never ever have met them. But, you know, we had that sort of relationship.

Yeah, Jan, you're amazingly modest for what you've managed to accomplish. So you had people, but what about you were selling them something that hadn't been built in many cases and you were doing illustrations, not photographs. I have to ask you, well, 1990s, we didn't have iPhones, of course, you know, and photography was quite expensive, actually. Was that why you didn't use photographs? Absolutely, yeah.

I mean, I couldn't afford— you know, if, if we had photographs, I'd have had to buy the pieces, I'd have had to prototype the pieces, and then pay for photography, and the proto would have cost more. There was no chance of me having proper photographs.

Yeah, no, well, I know, and I used to, you know, work in advertising, and a day shoot was, was a small fortune. And then all the— yeah, and then a color color print and so on. Did you have to offer some kind of a money-back guarantee then? Because if you're offering a sort of sight-unseen product—

I mean, we were very, very hot on service, particularly in the early days. And I bullied anybody who did any work for me mercilessly. But, you know, I knew it was crucial to the designers to have stuff in the right quality and on the right day. And I was never going to get off the ground if that didn't happen. So, you know, if— I mean, that's the odd time I stayed up all night and attempted to finish something myself, you know, if need be. But whatever it took, they got it.

Jan, I love that, that commitment. And I guess also born out of your domestic situation, there was, there was no plan B. You couldn't walk away. And no, I mean, it never occurred to me.

I got so scared looking back, but at the time I just had to keep going.

Yeah, yeah, no, I can see that. Amazing. Jan, you, you did manage over time to build the business and transitioned into being more and more of a brand. So I'd love to start to move on to that journey where, you know, over 20 years you built this into a multi-million pound business and, and sold the brand and not the manufacturing. So that's brilliant. Tell us, how did you start to build the Jan Cavell brand?

Well, gradually we got bigger, for one thing, and started selling to more people. Um, we were in a moderately niche area. So, and also a fairly high turnover. I mean, interior designers turn over in the companies they work for quite fast. And, you know, so if you've got a good supplier in a business that's like that, you don't dump them because you're going to work for another company. You retain the supplier. So, they become your best brand ambassadors if you're serving them well, which is one thing that is so important, I think. in building a business. But also, we did in latter days when we got a bit more established, we did things like one of our most successful campaigns was running advertisements in House& Garden. And we would take a whole page out, which was staggeringly expensive because all those glossies are, if you've been in advertising, you know what it's like. You're talking 5 figures a page easy. But we would talk up to some of the people who bought from us and say, would you like to be listed as a stockist? And therefore it'll cost you, you know, we're going to have 50 stockists or 40 stockists on there, and therefore it'll bring you business because you can be the stockist for Hastings or whatever. But equally, it'll cost you £300. But once you put the whole lot together, it's a mini investment for them. But maximum exposure for us. And that worked in establishing us as a brand. That worked beyond belief. You know, suddenly we were with the big boys playing little money. So that was excellent in many ways. It was also a challenge, but—

Very, very clever. Now, Jan, you mentioned that's a challenge. Do you want to just tell us in all the successes that you've had, one, just one thing that you think kind of didn't go according to plan, um, from a marketing point of view.

That was a challenge because, of course, as we were selling to order, I, I don't know whether I'd overlooked it or just leapt ahead, but, um, people assumed— the general public assumed they could then go to somewhere, one of these designers, and find stock, which, of course, designers only bought to order, was a little bit, um, tricky. So we got one or two of the general public ringing up and spitting blood. But on the whole, it worked really well.

Yeah, I guess if you call them a stockist, uh, yeah, technically they've got stock, right? And actually, but yeah, some of that fell through the cracks a little bit, but you managed to overcome that. So would that then have been sort of, I guess, from a sort of a something not working quite as well potentially risked your reputation for service and delivery by by offering something at scale when the business was not at that scale yet?

I think it was, yeah, it was borderline. I mean, I think also, you know, the people who came in and they were paying very, very little money relatively for the exposure suddenly expected far, far more in the way of service. And, you know, were expecting just superb treatment when they'd got excellent anyway, which really wasn't any justification for the money involved. And we also found that one or two of them, because they got a discount for stock, so that they could have some if they wanted to, were actually supplying all their clients with discounted pieces, which never actually hit the showroom floor. That was another disadvantage.

Yes.

So yeah, there were a few challenges involved.

Okay, so sort of managing that sales promotion is something we we need to think about if we're going to go into that, um, space.

Yeah, you want to be sure that nobody's actually going to take you for a ride.

Jan, you've mentioned, um, of course at the beginning we talked about you managed to build and sell this brand. As we, we only have 20 minutes, although you've got an amazing life story there and you've written books as well, um, how did you manage to sell the brand? Because that's the ultimate, right? You managed to build a business sell the brand and then carry on with your life afterwards. How did you manage to do that?

Well, I'd been thinking about selling for a long time. As you've gathered, I was so ignorant when I started off. The vision of selling a business, I mean, whoa, right over my head. But I had started by that time going to courses and things, which I think is, it's really necessary. I'd encourage anybody thinking about setting up a business to understand how the buying and selling works, because you are creating something that could be of capital value. And I certainly didn't understand that, and I would have done it in different ways had I known that at the beginning. But that's a whole new set of information and stories there. But yeah, I mean, I debated whether to sell it for about 5 years, and then the day came and I just thought, I cannot face one more day doing this. I'm, you know, the business I'd loved and joked that people would have to carry me out of. you know, had suddenly become something I didn't want to be in anymore. I think you don't expect necessarily that you can fall out of love with your business, but it does happen, definitely. And another good reason why you need to know how to sell it. So, you know, it was at that point, having turned down many offers, some very good offers, I suddenly thought, I don't care about actually the money anymore. I just want to get out. before Christmas, it was— it came down to. And, uh, by that time it was autumn, and I knew a competitor was interested in the brand, and so we talked to him. And, um, I probably should have spent more time in, in actually seeing who else was interested, because I think I'm right, because he's closed now, and I think he sold it on to somebody else. And I keep on meaning to look it up, but, uh, you know, because I saw a different company selling John Cavell bedsides the other day, and I thought, hey, What's going on?

Yeah. So, and I think the key point there for me is that, uh, for all the supply of the product, in the end, the brand survives.

Yeah.

Was, was the value. And of course, people like Apple and Coca-Cola, actually, the product changes, but the brand, the continuity of promise to the customer of your service and your reputation is really what people were buying, Jan, right?

I think so. Yeah. And some of the designs, um, you know, over the years. And this is a good sort of trick to remember if you're building a business and you've got limited skill and knowledge. I was so very obsessed with the sales and marketing, which was the bit I did best, that I would look at all these specials that people would order and be able to use that as my own form of market research. Because if they were buying a lot of tables with square legs or something and we didn't have one in the brochure, I would think, oh right, next time. put a table with square legs in. And so, you know, I had this regular flow of information, which was wonderful. We were very devoted to follow that. So we were considered quite strong on design side, which goodness knows, with me not being able to draw, we were not. But what I could do was say to the makers, you know, hold on a second, you know, you've seen those square legs that are floating through all the time, how about we do something like that?

Jan, I love how you've used sort of, well, market intelligence for building things. Now, final question, Jan. If there's one piece of intelligence that you'd like to share with my fellow unnoticed entrepreneurs about getting noticed, what would you say to us?

I would say definitely be absolutely fearlessly authentic, because unless you stick to that, A, you're going to be very unhappy, and B, you won't be able to blow it up, which you have to be a bit if you're developing a brand. So be fearlessly authentic.

Wonderful. Jan, when you say blow it up, what do you mean? Sorry.

Yes, sorry, I should have put that slightly better. You have to be a little bit larger than life. You have to make your brand a little bit larger than your next-door neighbor. You know, it's blowing the picture up to be louder, bigger than the next-door one.

Jan, I love that. As someone I heard the other day called it, uh, living out loud.

That's a much better way of putting it. But yes.

No, but no, blowing up your brand and living out loud, but being authentic. And Jan Kavell, what an authentic and inspiring story that you shared today. And so modest, and yet you've accomplished so much, uh, just intuitively as an entrepreneur. So thank you for sharing that very much today.

My pleasure.

So you've joined myself and Jan Cavell over— actually, she's in Hastings in Sussex on the east side of England. And Jan, if people want to get hold of you, how can they do that?

Thanks, Jim, very much. They can get hold of me through my website. It's just www.jancavell.co.uk. Great.

And that's C-A-V-E-L-L-E.

That's absolutely right, Jim. Thank you.

You're welcome. So thank you for joining Jan and I today. I'm sure you've been as inspired as I have with her story. And if you've enjoyed it, do please share this with a fellow unnoticed entrepreneur. And until we meet again, I just encourage you to keep on communicating. Thank you for listening.

Thank you.