From boredom to business, creating a side-hustle during lockdown - Joe Quinlan
Joe is an event and marketing professional based in Bournemouth who took his passion for hospitality and creativity to start a side hustle during the lockdown. Joe and his partner wanted to use their experience to create a brand and business from scratch. Joe tells us about his journey to creating the fabulous BonBonBoys.
My roots are firmly within the events and marketing industries.
I started working with some true key industry players at Story Events as an intern seven years ago and proceeded to have a hand in organising their famous, experiential trade shows aimed at the events and venues markets.
Prior to that, I worked in customer care for a cosmetics firm, Lush, in Dorset and after leaving Story, I returned to the sunny seaside in a marketing and communications management role for a group of bus and coach companies, part of the FTSE-250 Go-Ahead Group. I love anything to do with brand, experiences and good customer service, and now I'm about to embark on a new account management role for a tech firm in Bournemouth.
The pandemic has been a hugely interesting time for us all. I was extremely fortunate to have security in my full-time career, but I had always dreamed of running my own business. I really wanted to flex my creative muscles and create a brand I could be proud of. Lockdown brought about a lot of boredom in the evenings and on weekends and so one day, along with my partner, we decided to do something exciting.
Within two weeks, we had launched The Bonbon Boys.
Both armed with a sweet tooth and a desire to fulfil the gap that retail closures left in the market, we discovered our own pick 'n' mix delivery business. This is by no means new or revolutionary - there are many players in this field - but we hoped that, with our experience in design, marketing and branding, we could make a success of it.
I'd say to anyone looking to start a side hustle, try it - it's normally safer than a full-on career move.
It's such a great feeling having ownership of something and having the power to take it in your own direction.
We began with just one box of sweets - The 'Classic' One - and we sold around 400 boxes in the first month. Very quickly, we developed our product range and we now cater to the vegan market and the online gift market. We also offer free local deliveries to certain postcodes areas in fairly close proximity to us.
With continuous product development and being the front line staff of the business, it's been tiring and at times hard to juggle with a full-time job, but it's been worth every second and we have learned so much. I joke now and say that I'm an accountant, a marketeer, an operational specialist, a website designer, a product packer and so much more, yet all of that is true. I have pushed myself out of my comfort zone and I now have experience in so many areas of business that I can transfer to other projects and roles in the future.
The biggest challenge has been growing in moderation and I think this would be my top tip to anyone looking to start a side hustle - consider how much you want it to potentially take over your career. We both value our full-time jobs and so we never wanted the business to completely dominate our time, at least not initially, and so we've been careful with advertising, careful with product development and careful with developing a customer community, whilst also trying to promote the business in a positive light.
Lots of businesses fail because they grow too quickly, and I think our conservative approach to growth has actually really worked in our favour in that we've never jumped the gun.
We have around 50 exciting ideas a day for the business, and as lockdown starts to ease again, this will present challenges in terms of demand but opportunities in terms of development.
With the event market unlocking, we can turn our focus to B2B and event installations as well as continued product ideas to keep our catalogue fresh!
We really do pride ourselves on quality sweets, and I can't wait to share these with other markets beyond online delivery.
