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In Conversation With... Thortful
At the age of 18, Andy Pearce decided that he knew more about business than his university lecturers so he left after three months and went out and proved it. From a wheelie bin cleaning service to call centre empire Inkfish, and then onto conference calling company PowWowNow, he netted £millions in the process. However, it was Thortful, his online greeting card concern, that attracted the attention of millions of consumers at the end of last year as Andy held his own on the BBC’s Dragons’ Den TV programme. PG visited the online retailer’s London HQ and delved into the thoughfulness as well as the bold aspirations of this plucky entrepreneur. The greeting card industry received something of a late Christmas present when the Boxing Day episode of the highly popular BBC TV programme, Dragons’ Den kicked-off with a pitch from Andy Pearce for his online greeting card business, Thortful. And, this was a gift that kept on giving, as in addition to being a popular watch on ‘catch up’, the episode was also repeated on terrestrial TV right at the start of January. Yet, however good news this coverage was for the industry as a whole, highlighting the importance of sending cards to those they care about to a receptive chilled-out nation enjoying their festive break, it was a big style ‘money can’t buy’ advertising boost for Thortful, now 18 months into its ambitious business plan.
As he demonstrated on Dragons’ Den, Andrew Pearce is no pallid, techno geek who would prefer to communicate digitally. His quickfire talking, open body language, perma tan (the result of a two year sabbatical kite surfing round the world topped up at regular intervals) and boyish enthusiasm is engaging. He accepts he doesn’t have all the answers, but you get a distinct feeling he is going to have fun trying to find them. And his track record, after all, is pretty good, having banked £millions as a result of previous business sellouts. Right: Having waited for over 13 hours ‘in the wings’ Andy Pearce had to rev himself up for the Dragons’ Den presentation. Below: The Dragons’ Den cast. (Left-right) Touker Suleyman, Jenny Campbell, Deborah Meaden, Tej Lalvani and Peter Jones.
Right: Andy Pearce is a born entrepreneur.
This makes it all the stranger that the Dragons’ Den episode in which Thortful featured starts with Andy being lost for words - was this just a ruse to get the sympathy votes going for this ‘boy wonder’? Apparently not. “They get you to the set at 6am and you are kept away from everyone. I ended being last on at 7.15pm - almost 13 hours later. By then, I really had forgotten what I was going to say,” he laughs. He made up for it though, with his subsequent confident delivery resulting in two investment pledges from two ‘Dragons’ (from the ‘vitamin king’ Tej Lalvani and ‘cashpoint queen’ Jenny Campbell) while not missing a trick to push the merits of the greeting card industry and Thortful’s place within it, both now and in the future. Andy clearly gets a buzz about building businesses (and then selling them for a profit), seeing his lack of knowledge about a sector as an advantage. “I knew a little bit about call centres when I started Inkfish, but knew nothing about conference calling when we set up PowWowNow,” says Andy, making reference to the last two business through which he netted £20+ million as a result of their respective sell offs. “And I really knew very little about the greeting card market before starting Thortful, apart from my own frustrations as a consumer.” PROGRESSIVE GREETINGS WORLDWIDE
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