Founders
Rebekah Monk, Founder at Bathrooms.com, talks to Lexi Mills about how she grew what started as a side project to a £5m turnover business.
Bathrooms.com is a consumer website that sells bathroom products; built on the ethos that good design should also be affordable.
The business began has a side project when Rebekah Monk had her first child, however it grew sharply to such a scale that her husband, Ian Monk, had to leave his full time position to help manage it. Since then, the business has grown to more than 50 employees in the UK and China and has a turnover in excess of £5 million that is expected to more than double over the next 18 months.
Lexi spoke with Rebekah about the tactics she used to scale the business; what she thinks were the key success drivers for her company; and how she dealt with the challenges of raising funding and international expansion.
Tech Insights is a new series where we speak to experts in the DWEN community about hot technology topics. Forthcoming articles will cover Social Media and Data Management & Security. Click here to read the first article about doing business in the Cloud.
This second article in the series shares the knowledge of Mobility experts and entrepreneurs Joana Picq and Susan Feldman.
The mobile tech revolution not only increases productivity by enabling the next generation workforce to securely work from anywhere, anytime and on any device, but it allows consumers to make purchases on-the-go. Joana and Susan have both been harnessing the full power of the mobile revolution to grow their businesses.
The NextWomen and Astia are hosting the Global Pitch Competition in collaboration with the 2013 We Own It Summit June 27-28 in London.
In this interview Heather Boggini of PSDNetwork asks Simone for an overview of the pitch competition including who should apply; what to expect; and how each applicant and finalist benefits from the competition.
The NextWomen Technology Theme.
We meet the tech entrepreneur whose internet security product already has a million users in a 100 countries and who is working on a pilot scheme with Google.
Stina Ehrensvärd is the CEO & Founder of Yubico, creators of the YubiKey, an internet security product which generates a secure one-time password login for secure access into email, VPN, Windows, and websites. With its official mission being “to make strong two-factor authentication easy and affordable for everyone”, the YubiKey is crush-proof, waterproof, battery-free, and requires no client software. It has more than one million users in 100 countries and is currently being used in a Google pilot.
Previous to Yubico, Stina worked with several innovation projects, focusing on product design and communication.
Stina was born in the USA, grew up in Sweden and has an education in industrial design. Two years ago she relocated to Palo Alto, CA, and is working with the Internet thought leaders on new open standards protecting users’ identities on the Internet.
The Tech Insights series is a spin-off
from our
hugely successful The NextWomen DWEN Interview Series, which profiles female business
heroes.
The interviews were so popular that we are creating a new series, speaking to experts in the DWEN community about hot technology topics. Forthcoming articles will cover Social Media; Mobility; Data Management & Security.
This first article shares the knowledge of Cloud experts Daniela Gomes and Jane Silber.
The NextWomen Technology Theme
Poornima Vijayashanker is a software engineer and serial entrepreneur.
She was the sole female engineer at Mint.com, a startup based in down town Mountain View, which was acquired by Intuit in 2009.
Post acquisition she decided to leave Mint and launched her own startup, BizeeBee, helping fitness studios and other membership based businesses across the world grow their business.
Her new project is Femgineer, a campaign to encourage and empower more women to go into tech and science. It started as a blog, but now Poornima teaches workshops at San Francisco tech hubs such as General Assembly, Parisoma, and HackBright.
Poornima, who graduated from Duke University with a double major in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computer Science, was recently named in Inc Magazine’s 10 Women to Watch in Tech in 2013.
Ellen Clark is the Founder and CEO of
Control Corrective Skincare Systems , a
multi-million dollar, California-based company offering comprehensive,
collection-based skincare with a deep problem/ solution focus.
A skincare industry veteran, Ellen is a respected and sought-after national speaker, author, consultant and educator in advanced esthetics.
Ellen opened the first corrective skincare clinic in 1987 in Sunnyvale, CA and, due to an influx of clients seeking her specialty services, quickly expanded to another location in San Jose, CA.
Specializing in chemical peeling, anti-aging treatments and custom-formulated skincare products, Clark started a regional skincare distribution company while continuing to maintain solid traffic in her two clinics.
Stéphanie Cardot is the Founder and CEO of TO DO TODAY, a company which designs and implements work-life balance and well-being programs for the workplace.
Created in 2001, TO DO TODAY (TDTD) offers companies a portfolio of talent retention and attraction tools to assist employees to balance their private and professional lives, including on-site well-being facilities, concierges, child care and fitness centres.
Stéphanie is also Administrator of FESP (a union dedicated to companies offering services to people); Vice President of the Club L Femmes Forum (a women's forum); and sponsor of the l'Observatoire des Etats Généraux de la Femme 2010 (Observation of the General Status of Women 2010).
Before creating TO DO TODAY, Stéphanie held a Business Development position at Deloittes in New York and co-founded an auctions company in Paris and New York
We spoke to Stéphanie about how she uses technology to grow her business; how to inspire loyalty in employees; and how she balances her personal and professional life!
Jeff Lynn is Co-Founder and CEO of Seedrs, the world's fastest growing equity crowdfunding site, and was ranked number 55 in GQ magazine’s UK’s Most Influential Men earlier in the year.
Seedrs is the world’s first fully regulated online platform for investing in startups. It lets entrepreneurs seeking investment list their businesses on its website, and the public can invest modest (or large) amounts in the ones they think will succeed or maybe even be the next big thing - all through an entirely online process.
Since Seedrs launched in July last year, 21 highly promising startup businesses have secured the seed capital they were seeking and it was announced earlier this month that funding has just passed the £1 million mark. £700,000 was raised in the just the last 3 months, reflecting the rapid acceleration in growth that is underway.
One of the leading lights of the UK’s ‘Silicon Roundabout’ scene, Jeff is passionate about bringing the returns and excitement of investing in startups to a much wider audience, helping to bolster the UK’s economic recovery in the process. Jeff is American but adopted London as his home nearly a decade ago, and he believes that Britain is the best place in the world to build a high-growth, global business today.
The NextWomen Technology Theme.
“She's only thirty-three and just getting started,” said Gordia MacDonald, Senior Business Development Officer at the Centre for Women in Business. Gordia was describing the keynote speaker for their International Women's Day event, Jodi Glover, CEO of Real Tech, a clean tech solutions company .
“Jodi has overcome many gender barriers and succeeded,” Gordia paused and continued, “I see her in the future as a mentor or as an example for other women.”
Jodi has achieved impressive, international success in a predominately male industry. Her company provides innovative technology solutions that improve water quality analysis solutions throughout the world and her products are sold in 40 countries across the globe.
Upcoming Events
27 Jun 2013 - 08:00 - 28 Jun 2013 - 17:00London, UK
Featured Female Hero
