A “VIRTUAL” business in Formby generates very real sales of £3m and First2save founder Mark Radcliffe says it is poised to become the world’s biggest retailer at online marketplace Ebay.
Mr Radcliffe, 30, said monthly orders of 36,000 make him the largest Ebay trader in the UK, based on sales, and the sixth largest in the world.
But plans to expand from his current 10,000 sq ft warehouse to a 30,000 sq ft site – boosting his workforce from 19 to 34 – would enable First2save to overtake the current leading retailer’s level of 50,000 monthly orders.
Liverpool-born Mr Radcliffe said: “We are looking at the M58 corridor. We are currently interviewing and could take on 15 more staff.”
His business offers 6,000 different product lines of low-value goods, from protein power supplements to i-pod holders, computer cables and the popular Christmas lines of Scalextric racing kits and Hornby train sets.
Mr Radcliffe said Christmas was always the prelude to further expansion: “It brings a whole new range of products.
“We have a huge peak in November and December and each Christmas launches the business forward.
“January was busier than December and we have found this every year.”
He said Ebay was a low-risk opportunity to set up a business compared with a high street store: “There’s a lot of marketing to be done to get people to your store, whereas Ebay does that for you.
“There is a negative side through the weaker pound because we import a lot of goods.
“But we have software that keeps an eye on this for us and warns us when we come into low profit. We only sell goods that make a margin and we look at margin rather than turnover.”
Since eBay launched in 1999, it has become the UK’s largest online marketplace with one-in-two people viewing more than 17m million, covering 13,000 categories, at any one time.
Mr Radcliffe set up his own e-commerce business in 1999. He was a trainee Tesco manager in Southport but read a newspaper article about online retailing on his first holiday since starting work.
Starting in his parents’ garden shed, he moved to a warehouse in 2003 and set up First2save in 2005.
