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Seeing Beyond the Light
How long has the company been established?We have been established since 1986, when I graduated from St Andrews University. We began by designing and manufacturing sewing machine lights for clothing manufacturers like Levi who were coming under increasing competitive pressure from low cost labour markets. Wherever you went, the industry was talking about the need for higher quality more productive output, yet the factories were dark and the operators hunched over their sewing machines straining to see. It made no sense, so we set about helping to improve productivity through better lighting. We began life as Alex Lights, mainly because even we couldn’t get away with calling them Pratt Lights.
Where did the idea for the Serious Readers business come from?People kept asking us why we didn’t make a decent light for the growing aging population to use to read with at home. Did you know that 50,000 people in the UK are turning 50 every month? At the time we were supplying tonka task lights used by professionals in tough conditions like Baghdad Airport Control Tower or as map reading lights on board Military Humvies in Iraq. Most domestic lights are designed with a frilly aesthetic or a cheap manufacturing cost in mind, but we have always focussed on doing the job really well for those who rely on their light as an essential tool for their job or passion. RNLI Lifeboat crews, Opticians and Surgeons are amongst our traditional customer base.
How does the Serious business model work?We have been running what is called an acquisition model in that we attract and acquire customers who naturally have a need for only a limited number of lights, which means we need to run profitable acquisition and conversion strategies and to continually refresh our customer base. You can infact only get our latest lighting products directly from us or through our growing network of independent High Street Opticians, although we do offer on our classic models via Newspaper Reader Offers and a handful of catalogues as a means of promoting the Serious brand. As the first Serious product range has grown to include “Everything but the Book” for avid readers we have started to focus harder on customer retention by deploying basic segmentation tools and mailing schedules.
What is the company's philosophy?
As a small team we took a couple of days out of the office a few years ago to work out what we loved about working and winning together. In the vernacular these would probably be called our corporate values, and they turn out to be about delivering more than expected (surprising people), truly caring about getting things right (why would you settle for a shoddy job?), and being professional (any fool can be an amateur at anything). We’ve built the entire business around these three core values. Our internal mantra is that we want our customers to rave about our products and service, but if they decide against our products, we’ll settle for raving fans of our service. We are far from perfect, but we know what great looks and feels like.
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How did it get off the ground?
After years of studiously avoiding the opportunity, in 2001 we finally created a test product using our unique lighting experience, and tested the market with some simple two stage adverts in the national broadsheets. One test followed another, and another ad infinitum, until we launched properly just under three years ago. The retail business will be £3m this year up from £1.75m last year. The lights we supply have been used on Space Shuttles, Global Ballooning attempts, featured in the last three James Bond Movies, and by Mr and Mrs Thompson of Chichester. The Chelsea Pensioners have each been equipped with one of our lights.
Who is your key target market?
Once we hit 40 years old our eyes tend to start struggling with detail as a result of the age related eye condition presbyopia. Our reading lights and other products are designed to improve matters for those aged 40+ who are avid readers and who appreciate reading tools designed and built to do the job well. We are a best of breed supplier, and shy away from the Walmartisation and flatpack fever that seems to permeate many distance-selling operations.
When was the first catalogue produced?
Our first test retail catalogue was produced in 2001. Before then our business was exclusively B2B, working with regular Industrial OEM and Distributor accounts, and based on long term ongoing relationships supported by a sales model. Growing a B2C customer base from scratch meant that producing our first catalogue became essential.
How often are the catalogues changed / refreshed?
This year our plan involves four catalogue refreshes and a complete revision of all marketing touch points this will also include insert and mailer programmes.
How would you define the Serious Readers Catalogues?
Best of breed Reading Lights, Reading Accessories and Reading Gifts. We try to do well what others do cheaply.
What process do you use to source Serious products?
Design and build, have built, or find something already out there. Most of what we sell is the result of customer feedback and ideas. We believe that the right product pipeline lies at the heart of any successful specialist retail operation. Often, we might test an idea with an imperfect product and work to refine it into a best breed item.
How often do you introduce new products?
We are a highly innovative bunch, which means that from September 2008 none of our main lighting products will be more than 12 months old. This year we have also over 200 new reading aids and we already have 2 completely new light ranges planned for 2009.
When did the website launch?
This has been our Achilles heal. We have been trading on the web since the 1990’s and re-launched the ecommerce site in Nov 2007, but only following a 2-year delay caused by making the wrong choice for an on line partner. It has been an unmitigated expensive disaster for us.
How has the website contributed to sales?
We used to do pay per click and solid SEO ranking work when we controlled it ourselves but since we moved to the “experts” we’ve ending up treating the web as purely an imperfect purchasing channel. Before every web agency in the country emails me, I should make clear that we have already acted to put this matter right. About 25% of our orders are placed on line.
Is there a particular time of day and / or day of the week your website is the busiest?
No idea, but ask me this time next year and you’ll get the most detailed answer from anyone you’ll find as we are going to be on a mission this year to recover lost ground. It wouldn’t be appropriate for me to go into print with the name of the unethical supplier who has let us down so badly, but if anyone is thinking of taking on a new web agency, I have a wealth of knowledge about what not to do and who’s blarney I and several other distance sellers would be unlikely to trust again.
Have you put procedures into place to monitor your customer buying behaviour?
Yes. We have web analytics but being an acquisition model, it is the first 3 months after acquisition of interest that makes the big difference for us. We focus most effort here.
How do maintain your customer database?
Our database is managed in house but we are in discussion with experts in the field to consider how we could improve on the basic data analysis that we currently undertake.
Do you segment your database?
We have been waiting for our customer list to grow beyond 100k before deploying intelligent segmentation. In 2008 we will be segmenting on the basics of Recency, Order Value, and Product Type with a view to maximising ROI on our customer communications and gaining a clearer understanding of who shops with us and why? We are in early discussions on how we might get much more clever on this front in 2009.
How often do you send out your email newsletters?
We surveyed our customers by email to get their opinion on our new Serious brand logo and its colour but we have yet to move beyond this.
What is the fundamental reason for your email newsletters?
We don’t issue these yet but we do intend to do so with the express objective of giving our customers added value without a prompt to buy something from us. Not all customer communications need to revolve around prompting a purchase, and email offers the chance to stay in touch with our customers in a cost effective way. Our aim is to become the most recommend distance retailer in the UK, so generating positive word of mouth is a core objective and not just a short term ROI consideration.
Do you use a specific email marketing service provider?
Not at this time but we had hoped we would be using one by now. Sadly we experienced serious delays following a poor choice of on line partner, which has cost us 2 years and many thousands of pounds. After SEO, we perceive email as the most critical on line web traffic generator.
Would you say you have any competitors?
Oh my, yes. There are so many purveyors of task lights out there from John Lewis to Ikea, plus a raft of independent lighting retailers and a myriad of other Asian sources. What sets us apart though is that we really do concentrate on best of breed solutions for people who need help to see a wee bit better as we all eventually come to do, and we steer clear of the usual tripe that is often pedalled as high quality merchandise, but is a cheap or frilly way of doing a job that could be done properly. Our niche is like everything else out there; we all have a choice between the well designed, thought through, best of breed products like the ipod, and cheaper value-propositions that look the part and do the job ok for less money.
What has been the growth revenue in the last few years?
We have experienced double digit growth in each of the last 4 years and our plan for 2008/09 is for £4m.
Over the years have there been any huge threats to the Serious business?
During the period of changeover we lost money for a couple of years, which is always a bit off putting, but we viewed it as an investment in the future business, something which is now starting to pay off. There are threats all around every business but our approach is to isolate the key risks and manage them, like for instance the recent currency changes which have made a big impact on our global component purchasing.
What does Serious acknowledge as their biggest achievement?
In just over two years, with no mail order background within the team, we’ve taken a B2B business that served just 100 regular OEM accounts, plus the mere germ of an idea, to become a slick scaleable mail order machine now serving over 100,000 people, and we’ve even made money while doing it, which we are discovering seems to be a bit of a rarity for small. The scale of the opportunity we have created for the serious brand is inspiring us to bigger and greater things. We get better at this every day.
What is set for the future for Serious?
This year we will be concentrating on building the UK Serious Readers business while preparing for a small test expansion overseas in 2008 in an export market where we already have a long history of doing B2B business. At the same time we are in early stage planning for other “Serious” brand concepts that might suit our target demographic and that might see the light of day in 2010.
We love what we do and it gives us a kick to know that our lights have travelled into Space on the Shuttle and deep under the ocean on board Nuclear submarines, but the biggest kick of all comes from the customers who say “I wish every retailer was as professional and caring as you are. You really surprised us”, because that’s the reaction we are built to crave.
