Chorley couple turn £350 into a thriving six figure Amazon business whilst juggling full-time jobs and kids

Jill and Mark Henderson, who have been together since teenagers and married for 14 years, founded BUSHBABY in September 2020 whilst juggling full-time jobs and raising their two young children, Willow and Jessica, who are now six and three respectively.

37-year-old Jill was at the time a Business Change Analyst for Lancashire County Council and Mark, 39, was a manager at a street lighting company - but both have kept up their full time jobs despite running their ever growing business.

BUSHBABY, which provides unique and ethically sourced gifts and keepsakes for both mum and baby, is sold with the help of the ‘Fulfilment by Amazon’ scheme: find out more about how Jill and Mark turned £350 into a six figure side hustle below…

How did BUSHBABY come about?

When Jill and Mark were on parental leave with their second child, they realised how hard it was to find the perfect gift for new mothers and babies, and reflected on how little time they spent with their children during the working week - BUSHBABY was born with the aim to solve both these issues. 

Jill told the Post: “When we were receiving baby gifts, there wasn't anything really unique in the market. It was very much off the supermarket shelves, like your baby towels or your muslins, and the gifts seemed quite impersonal for how joyous the occasion is. So we really wanted to create bespoke hampers, gifts that involve things for mum and also for babies, and something that was a gifting experience, rather than just an item that you would pick up off the supermarket shelves. 

“The second reason [for launching BUSHBABY] was when we had our first child Willow, and we returned to work, we were putting the girls in childcare for 10 hours a day, really long hours and that balance between work and home life just wasn't there and that's what we wanted to improve.”

Whilst both parents still hold their full-time jobs, they recognise that the success of their online business offers them the chance to improve their work/life balance in future, with this flexible way of working already applying to the new employee they have hired.

Jill explained: “The aim is to grow the business to a point where we can leave the nine to five jobs. We had quite a difficult choice to make when we were thinking about growing the businesses - do we give up the nine to five now or do we offer someone the opportunity to work with us to help with that - and it's the second one that we've gone for in the interim, which is working out really well. It's another new mum who was looking to go back to work, but couldn't find anything that was suitable against the childcare commitments so what we've been able to offer is fully flexible, working from home arrangements, which allows her to fit the work around family life.”

How successful has BUSHBABY been?

Since launching in 2020 with just £350 from their personal savings, BUSHBABY quickly grew and turned over £100,000 in its first year. Originally a sole trader, BUSHBABY is now a limited company which has a 20 percent increase year on year.

Jill commented: “Going into business is something that I've always wanted to do as a business change analyst. It was really a risk free opportunity to try it out and see how it went. We had 350 pounds of our own savings that we used to produce our first gift items, and when we put those on sale on Amazon, we really didn't expect it to grow as quickly as it did. We didn't have to put on any advertising, we just started getting the sales through and they increased quite quickly so we were able to take the money from the sales and reinvest and the demand just kept increasing."

How has partnering with Amazon helped?

Jill and Mark attribute 95% of their sales to their Amazon store and say the Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA) model gives their lives more flexibility as Amazon stores, picks, packs and ships their products to customers for them, as well as providing 24/7 customer service.

Jill explained: “On average, they reckon that if you are fulfilling orders yourself, it takes about 10 minutes an order to fulfil so if we're selling 100 units a day and sending those directly to the customers, we would need to invest to get that infrastructure within the business, perhaps have an office space where we could fulfil those orders, but the Fulfilment by Amazon model allows us to produce the gift items and send them directly to Amazon, and they hold them within their warehouse. And because they're being held centrally by Amazon, they're able to offer that same day delivery as well so without the Amazon FBA model, we wouldn't have been able to grow like we have done.

“Not only has Amazon given us access to a huge audience but it has allowed us to create the business while continuing our nine to fives, all while having a young family. Using FBA enables us to work at times that are flexible and convenient around all the other commitments in our lives.”

How has starting BUSHBABY benefited their lives?

Jill answered: “It's allowing us to start planning for the future. We can see that we've got sustained sales, and we've got increased growth so we're hoping very soon that we will be able to give up one of the nine to fives to focus on the business and be able to spend that extra time with the kids. We can work in the evenings when the kids have gone to bed and work business around family life, rather than having those fixed hours where we have to be present in an office.”

What advice would they give others wishing to start an online business?

Jill said: "You need to understand your customer, understand the market and really focus. It's very easy to go have lots of ideas but it's really beneficial to be able to come up with a set plan that focuses your energy into a particular place, rather than being spread too wide.”

Having themselves launched BUSHBABY with the Fulfilment by Amazon model, Jill would encourage others to do the same, as “rather than being at work nine to five, it gives you that flexibility to balance work and the family life” which is exactly what their goal with the business is.

What is their goal?

Jill told the Post: “From the beginning, we've been really mindful that we wanted to create something different from your traditional business model. We've thought a lot about the culture of the business so we've got a really big focus on flexibility in our lives and we wanted to be able to share that with other people. No one has a child to put the baby in childcare for 10 hours a day, the corporate world of work predominantly doesn't align to that family/work life balance. 

“I'm sure you've heard the phrase that the world revolves around money, we believe that the world revolves around people and what we're trying to do is embed that within everything that we do, working with our suppliers, working with the local community and that aligns very well to our sustainability aims as well. We want to create something that adds back into the world and we work with a lot of independent UK businesses, who predominantly are family run, that share our ideals of sustainability and supporting staff and supporting people.”