I’ve always been business-minded, looking for solutions to problems,
finding ways to improve things and thinking of ways people could do
things better.
I have several family members with their own businesses and that
probably influenced me growing up, because I’ve always wanted to run my
own business, too. Working for other companies and helping them grow
made me realise that this was something I could do for myself, so I set
about trying to make that happen.
I was introduced to Nadine, who had 15 years of experience in the travel industry, and we launched eShores
in 2007. Nadine and I worked from her spare room for 12 hours a day,
seven days a week. Within four months we had built the business up
enough to move into a small serviced office and take on two staff.
That’s when we knew eShores had really begun!
We saw a gap in the market for a travel company that provided the
ease of booking online with the level of service and support offered by
high street agencies. We knew that if we were to go down the luxury
route and provide high quality service throughout the whole holiday
experience, we could create a business that was unique in the market at
that time.
Once we’d seen considerable success with eShores we decided to try
branching out by launching another website that offered cheap holidays
that could be booked online. Quickly we found that marketing the second
website was very expensive and difficult, because it didn’t offer
anything different from other cheap holiday sites.
Trying to expand the business was a costly endeavour, but it made us
realise that it’s not always best to branch out into a different area.
If you have something that works, it’s better to focus all your time and
effort in to making it the best it can be.
We don’t regret trying out the second business. It had an effect on
eShores and took our focus away from the main core of our business, but
this simply taught us a valuable lesson in keeping 100% focused on the
main product, because this is what works best for us.
My advice to anyone starting out in business would be: choose the
market that you want to aim towards and build it around that; and make
sure you offer something different – you must stand out if you are to
succeed.
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