A SINGLE mum from Stratford, who
set up a business selling furniture on eBay 18 months ago, is now
exporting all over the world.After a successful career in IT, Juliette
Thomas gave up work to have a family but when she found herself as a
single mother with four children under the age of six, she decided to
work from home and established her business in 2005.
Her goals in the beginning were small and her first trip to a UK
wholesaler was to literally fill her car with items such as crystal
glasses and home accessories that suited her taste. Juliette’s
philosophy was that she would at least have nice items for her own home
and a few Christmas presents if they failed to sell on eBay.
But they sold out quickly and three months down the line the company
had been named Juliette’s Interiors Limited and a range of
high-quality designer and French furniture items had been added to the
stock.
After establishing its own website, the business has gone from strength
to strength and items are now being sold all around the world
particularly to the USA, France and the Algarve.Part of the success has
been down to web optimisation – which basically means
Juliette’s Interiors pays to ensure it is on the first page of
high profile search engines when relevant key words are typed in by
potential customers.
It means if a browser types in ‘French furniture’ into a
search engine such as Google then Juliette’s Interiors will be
one of the top items found.
Juliette said: “I was achieving success early on selling designer
high-end, high-quality products and needed to have a site of my own if
I was going to increase turnover and gain credibility from the
marketing strategy now in place.
“I had great help from organisations such as the Chamber of
Commerce and Business Link which helped me to establish the business
from the mentoring and financial assistance they gave me.
“Once the website was up and running, I needed to drive traffic
to the site and web optimisation has worked brilliantly and has helped
me to grow the business without any geographical boundaries– not
just in the UK but abroad too.”
Martin King-Turner, of the National B2B Centre - the e-business centre
of excellence for the West Midlands - said: “Juliette’s
Interiors is a classic example of how the internet has made it so much
easier to launch a new business and gain customers all over the world
much more quickly than you could a decade ago.
“It still takes a great deal of hard work and search engine
optimisation is crucial for this type of business. Juliette has
cottoned onto that straightaway and that has been a big factor in the
company’s success.”
Read the Article from the Stratford Observer
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