What does your company do? What products or services does it provide?
FanFinders provides brands in the parenting sector with data and insight on their target audience.
We work with the likes of Huggies, Mothercare, Mamas & Papas and Heinz (to name but a few) and help them gain new leads, as well as creating sampling opportunities, brochure request, newsletter sign ups, app downloads and more. Where we differ from other lead gen companies is that we generate fresh insightful data based on brand objectives from truly interested leads. We don’t just sell lists of impersonal data.
Where did the idea for your business come from?
My colleague and fellow director Alec conceived the idea after his first child was born. His expertise lies in technology and he saw a way of modernising the baby focussed sampling business. There are many baby clubs out there that offer samples and vouchers to new mums however none of them work from a truly digital platform and its time this business moved with the times.
When did you start up and what support were you given?
I got involved in 2012 and the business has been flourishing ever since. To be honest we haven’t had any outside support really, other than a reliance on each of our individual expertise and experience. That’s where our business has really worked, we each have very different strengths.
What has been your biggest achievement so far?
Making Fanfinders the fastest growing parenting club in the UK has been quite exciting, we have over half a million mums and mums-to-be signed up and we’re growing at a rate of 40,000 per month. The beauty is that it’s a recurring customer base with approximately 698,000 new mums per annum. Despite this, I still don’t think we’ve had the ‘moment’ yet. 2015 will be the year, so watch this space.
What has been the biggest challenge so far?
We are lucky as everything with our business has been quite smooth so far, we have had minor ups and downs but our biggest challenge is yet to come.
We will be launching Your Baby Box in 2015, a big step for us and one we are not underestimating. We will be delivering Your Baby Box, a collection of samples and info direct to the doors of new mums who sign up to the club via Your Baby Club (we estimate about 500,000 in the first year.) Arranging samples, boxes and home deliveries on this scale has the potential to be a logistical nightmare.
I am hoping that we have pre-empted a lot of the challenges we’ll face and already have procedures in place to manage it, however until you live these things you can’t be sure. We have a good team in place ready to execute this and just need a few more brands to sign up to ensure a strong contribution for the launch.
