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Face To face: Find Me A Gift
Get Happy From very small - and rocky - beginnings at the start of the dotcom boom, Find Me A Gift, winner of The Greats 2018 Best Online or Mail Order Gift Retailer category, has gone from strength to strength over the past 18 years, currently employing 60 permanent staff and offering some 7,000 products. In a hugely competitive online market place, founder and managing director Adam Gore tells PG&H why he loves being in a business that makes people happy, not least because it makes him happy too! Three words seem to sum up Find Me A Gift’s Adam Gore - 'determined, passionate and quirky'. Against all the odds, he had such a strong belief in the potential of Find Me A Gift - a company he co-founded from a bedroom with three friends in 1998 - that when the official launch of the company coincided with the bursting of the dotcom bubble, he bought 100% of the company’s £40,000 debt when the others bailed out. “The debt we accrued was partly due to the impact of 9/11 in 2001 which had a dramatic impact on retail, our over reliance
Above: Adam Gore, founder and managing director of Find Me A Gift. Left: Grow Your Own Hairy Beaver is Find Me A Gift’s top selling product. Below: Lena Gore (Adam’s wife), the company’s sales and marketing director, together with marketing manager Sarah Hague, are shown receiving The Greats Best Online trophy in May. The award was presented to them by Sam Wahid, managing director of Gift Republic, sponsors of the category.
on the Christmas period and a huge investment in a marketing campaign,” explains Adam, an automotive engineer and self-confessed ‘petrol head’ who spent almost a decade working in the car industry. “Nevertheless, somewhere inside me, I had a strong belief that the company needed five years to turn itself around,” he continues, “I was 30, very competitive, and believed that anything
was possible. I believed I could do it and make the business successful regardless of the challenges that lay ahead.” What made Adam’s passion and gut feeling about the potential success of Find Me A Gift a reality was the phenomenal sales of replica light sabers in 2002. “After a tough start, it was the springboard product that really changed our fortunes. As soon as stock came in it flew out,” he remembers with a smile. “We couldn’t get enough of them. And it was the success of these light sabers, which we sold for
A ‘Great’ Achievement As for winning a Greats award in May, Adam takes no personal credit, emphasising that it is completely down to the team of people that he employs. “We see the award as recognition for their achievement, so much so that everyone working in the business will, or has had, the trophy sitting on their desk for a few weeks. Six months on, it’s still doing the rounds, and will ultimately end up in the boardroom where it will take pride of place.”
Progressive Gifts & Home Worldwide
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