Our First Year Goals - Our story so far

Hi there.

My name is Aaron and I originally started this website in 2010.
At that time I focused largely on a typical online store model of buying items I listed in a small amount of bulk as interest demanded from a wonderful wholesaler who let me purchase individual items instead of whole pallets; which is typical with most wholesalers. This kind wholesaler even allowed me to come to their warehouse every day at the time and ‘shop.’ which was not typical of most of their clientele. Allowing me to grow the business slowly over the first 2 years. Although we were never profitable, that has never been my goal; the goal has always been to offer a 100% vegan online store for vegans, vegetarians and any health conscious individuals to purchase items which they knew would be vegan without having to check all the packaging first.

At the time I built the website, purchased, picked and packed all the products myself and dealt with all customer service. Eventually I employed one friends to help me as order volume picked up and we built up a wonderful list of customers, perhaps sending out 20 or so orders a day by the end of the second year. Unfortunately it was at this point I moved away from my home town and had to leave the business in her capable hands.

It was common for us at this time to receive a few queries every week from small independent producers who wanted to send us their products to sell, but our model didn't make this possible and I felt I was letting these people and their great products down. So we decided to shift the business model to one where we could let vegan companies list their own products and send them to customers themselves, acting as a sort of online vegan farmers market. I took the old website down in about 2014 and in my spare time I worked on launching the new website; unfortunately life, cost and other complications stood in the way and postponed the launch further and further.

Now it is 2025 and the website is finally ready to launch the way I wanted it.

My goals for the first year are to not charge our vendors any commission on items they sell, I know that it is very hard to build up a client base and very costly. I would like to make that as easy as possible and just offer an alternative portal for vendors to be able to reach customers across the UK.
I promise to not stand in the way of vendors withdrawals, all withdrawals will be approved if their balance is sufficient.
I promise not to boost certain products or stores, the front page will be kept simple and will be dictated by the customers, the most popular products and stores will appear on the front page and that's it. There will be no ads or ad revenue, no paid product promotion or additional charges for better positioning in the store.
I promise to offer the best customer service I can, the vegetarian and vegan community have always been extremely understanding and I always felt that they appreciated a real service and a real product, not a massive monopoly with absolutely no personal touch.

Going forward in the first year we hope to foster a friendly community where individuals can easily find and purchase the products they want from their favourite vendors from all across the country and communicate with them easily. Please understand that many of these vendors are just starting small independent businesses and to please recognise that they are doing everything they can to offer and send you their great products, their may be hiccoughs in shipping or perhaps in an item that isn't to your satisfaction and the best thing to do is to offer them constructive criticism and wait for their professional response so that they can continue to grow their business for everyone's benefit.

Here is to a cleaner, healthier and more community driven 2025
-Aaron