WHY DID WE DO IT ANYWAY?

The corporate line would be to say is after constantly receiving unwanted gift cards, we realised there was a gap in the market for a spend anywhere gift card. And while this is true, it’s not the reason two chartered accountants and best friends (Thish & Andy) did it.

In truth it was Thish’s idea. He was working in insolvency and each time a retailer went bust, the gift cards they’d already sold became worthless. He didn’t think that was fair, and that’s where it all started.

THE BIG CORPORATE LIFE WASN’t US

We’d trained together as chartered accountants and became best friends. Now we hit our thirties, with 5 kids between us and counting. Thish is in a director in a NYSE-listed investment bank. Andy’s sales director of a UK consumer business, having previously been their FD. And while we like it, we didn’t love it. Really we’re just wide-boys from South London, and always wanted to run our own thing.

TIME TO QUIT

So we quit our jobs, had some awkward conversations with our wives about the loss of good, regular pay checks and off we went. Their Perfect Gift was born as Love From Me, Their Perfect Gift in 2014 with £20,000 in the bank. In October 2015 we raised £150,000 seed investment from friend and family, and we launched our first gift card in March 2016. In October 2016 we raised some more investment, but to date we’ve raised and invested less than £250,000. Yep, we boot-strapped it. We’re accountants, so we know how to look after cash!

TIME TO QUIT

We’ve survived everything this industry could throw at us – including twice our card issuing bank going bust! But you know what, we’re still here and we’re stronger than ever. And it taught us to have back-up plans for the back-up plans. So when the latest surprise came, we were ready and it hardly registered!

WE ARE NOT ALONE

The big thing we’ve always had is the support of some wonderful people. Emily was with us from almost the start, keeping our customers happy. Smit came on board and without him the back-end stuff would have crashed more times than we like to think. And our investors aren’t just investors. They are friends, and they’ve willed us to succeed all along, but not to make a return. Because they wanted to see us bring our dreams to reality.

So this is for them, and all the people over the years that have spent time working with us, putting up with us, and generally watching our backs.

Thank you all, and here’s to the next 10 years of Their Perfect Gift.