Nigel's Eco Store

Caring about the environment has been a passion for Nigel Berman for over 20 years and he was always keen to run a business more ecologically. In 2005 he was able to launch a new business - Nigel's Eco Store - that both sold eco-products and used an eco-friendly business model: ecommerce. The site has now won best shopping site in the Yahoo! UK Finds of the Year awards.

From an accounting and publishing background, he initially set up his web store as a sideline using a basic, web-based cart. Within 3 days a national newspaper enquired about his Eco-kettle which was hard to source at the time. By year end Nigel was flat out with a home full of stock and had decided to go part-time at his publishing company.

He moved to Actinic's ecommerce software to cope with the business growth of 40% and now turns over about £200k selling 200 products including coffins, razors with yogurt pot handles and state-of-the-art VOIP video phones (to cut the need to fly). A major step up for the Eco Store was getting the key pages optimised for search engines. Immediately traffic went up by 30% and within two months sales had doubled. The rapid growth presented other challenges: how to juggle all the jobs he needed to be on top of. The answer was outsourcing. Customers get a faster service now he's delegated the fulfilment process and telephone answering to small local specialists.

Website: www.nigelsecostore.com Location: Hove, E Sussex.

(Full story is 1030 words)