Columnist

“Hot stuff” - how thinking small saw female founders make it big

A business that began from a mum assisting with her son’s school project, to over half a million units sold worldwide, is set to celebrate its 10th anniversary with the re-launch of its most popular product - Hot Stuff In A Matchbox.

Marvling Bros, founded by friends Hayley Madden and Emma Dobie, creates mini gifts that can fit inside a matchbox (and your letterbox) which range from mini marshmallow toasting kits and micropub seed kits, to novelty stationery and their best-selling “Hot stuff” chilli in a matchbox gift.

Now, to celebrate their 10th anniversary, the team are set to get those tastebuds tingling once again with a relaunch of “Hot Stuff” and this time, it will be even hotter, as Emma explains;

‘We have been so busy preparing for Father’s Day that we hadn’t actually noticed we were coming up on our 10th anniversary but after testing the water with our customers we knew we had to mark it somehow and what better way than to bring back what is on every level our hottest ever product?

‘Hot stuff is actually what really saw the business take off. We’d gone from an accidental start-up based on a school project to just about getting by and visiting craft fairs to all of a sudden seeing our sales soar.

‘To this day, I don’t know exactly how it happened and we’d almost given up. In fact, Hayley had begun to return to her core photography business and we were plodding along. We had listed on NotOnTheHighStreet for their Christmas catalogue with an estimate of shifting maybe 1000 units (not bad vs 10 in week one) which I was a little downbeat about at the time to be honest.

‘Then all of a sudden….it clicked. Or rather, it beeped!’

Emma’s phone linked to their CMS system began beeping. Order after order was coming in.

At circa 10 orders a week up to then, Hayley and Emma had barely spoken about the business and Hayley was in a busy period for her event photography business. Then Emma called her.

’I got a call from Emma sounding a tad stressed. “Err, you better come over” so I headed over to see what was going on.

‘I discovered Emma somewhere underneath a pile of papers, packaging, matchboxes and chilli bottles. I could barely get into the living room. Emma’s phone was constantly bleeping as new orders kept coming in.’

Business was about to take off.

Roping in family members including the kids, four mums from the school run to assist with production and even Hayley’s partner’s 80+ year old mother to stick first class stamps on jiffy bags, production was in full swing. By the end of half term they were on 500 orders a day!

‘‘Funnily enough, Emma’s husband (who was a great support as we got going and helped us get off the ground with a £5000 cash injection) had projected that we could conceivably do this if we got the demand but I don’t think we actually thought it would happen. Certainly not this quickly anyway!

‘At one point our chilli supplier in China thought I’d made an error. “You’ve ordered 20,000 bottles Emma. Your last order was 2000.” I had to explain there was no error and that we were going to be needing more as Christmas was looming and our novelty gifting was clearly striking a chord!’

Fast forward 10 years and the team is now 7 strong with family members Charlotte and Kyle in digital marketing and warehouse managing roles, and loyal teams of suppliers and fulfilment assisting across the business. Plus, Emma and Hayley both have their houses back.

‘We’ve grown up as a business.’ admits Hayley.

‘We’ve had to learn the hard way wrestling with tech, battling with logistics, supply chains and all manner of chilli burns! However, I think at one level our business “innocence” at the start has served us well. We are both very creative people and we just tend to ask the question “what if we tried this” quite a lot. Plus, we are chalk and cheese in terms of personalities.

‘When you add in the support of family and friends you can build a fantastic opportunity but of course, you have to take it. We grasped it with both hands and yes, we were wearing protective gloves!’

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