35_37_GF.qxp_Grid 01/07/2022 16:01 Page 1
In conversation with...
Food for Thort-ful “I have never worked so hard in my life,” Andy Pearce, founder of Thortful reflected on the past few pandemic years, when the online greeting card platform really came into its own, quadrupling its turnover to £28 million in just one year. PG caught up with the plucky fast-talking entrepreneur at its London HQ about how ‘normal’ life is affecting the online card buying habits of the nation in the Thortful camp.
At the age of 18, Andy Pearce decided that he knew more about business than his university lecturers so he left after three months, 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. Not being an expert in these fields he saw as a bonus. “I knew a little bit about call centres when I started Inkfish, but knew nothing at all about conferencing calling when we set up PowWowNow,” says Andy, making reference to the last two businesses 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,” Andy told PG back in 2018,
Above: Thortful’s founder, Andy Pearce in the company’s headquarters in London’s Westminster. Right and above right: The ‘joys’ of the lockdown 2020. A Carole Baskin card from Jungle Press and a selfisolating design from Megan Claire that sold on the Thortful platform. Below: The Thortful site now offers 80,000 cards from over 4,000 creators.
shortly after he had appeared on the BBC’s Dragons’ Den Christmas special, not really to secure investment, but to market the Thortful brand to the programme’s millions of viewers. It worked! According to Andy it was a rather fruitless search on the high street to find a suitable Christmas card for his mum that first prompted the idea for Thortful. “Like most men, I had probably left it too late to find a good card,” he admitted to PG. While aware of the leading online greeting card operators (Moonpig and Funky Pigeon being the most notable), it was that uninspiring card shopping trip that fast tracked his ruminations on creating an alternative platform, which would place creative designs rather than personalisation options or photo uploads as the real driver for the customer engagement. Loving the fact that Thortful was being seen as a disrupter, back in 2018, even though the platform had not made a penny profit, Andy wagered a bet with PG (for a bottle of Laurent Perrier rose champagne) that Thortful’s expansion would see it accounting for 10% of the total card market. PROGRESSIVE GREETINGS WORLDWIDE
35