LDC Top 50 2024
Amy Knight
Founder
Must Have Ideas
Amy Knight has a simple motto: “Treat everyone like your nan and make decisions that would make your mum proud.” She started online retailer Must Have Ideas from her spare room in 2018 with husband Rob Knight and business partner Chris Finch. They invested £3,000 and bought 1,000 boxes of Hygiene Hero antibacterial sponges.
“The idea was to sell exciting, innovative products that you couldn’t find in a supermarket,” she says. Today, the company sells more than 200 different products and dispatches 7,000 orders a day. “I want to turn Must Have Ideas into a household name and be a role model to our daughters.”
I want to turn Must Have Ideas into a household name and be a role model to our two young daughters.”
Q&A
What’s your proudest business achievement?
Moving into our current HQ – a 40,000 sq ft building which we named The Ideas Factory – in 2021 felt like a huge milestone. It was absolute chaos when we first arrived. We were told the new premises were ready so we rocked up with our lorries full of stock, but it was still a building site and the toilets hadn’t even been installed! Once the fit-out was complete, I thought, “Now we’re a proper, grown-up business.”
What sets your business apart?
We have a brilliant in-house customer services team and they are empowered to do whatever they want to keep customers happy. Our phone lines are open from 8am to 8pm, seven days a week, products are delivered within two days or the order is free, and we have a 100-day no-quibbles money-back guarantee. We know that if we look after customers, they’ll come back.
How do you motivate your team?
We have lots of extra little perks for our 145 staff, like free breakfast every morning, free car-cleaning every month, an air-hockey table and sweet dispensers dotted around the office. We have a strict office-working policy. I think it’s impossible to develop when you’re stuck at home: you miss out on those water-cooler conversations, and it can be harder to ask for help. We’re better together.
