An Interview with Ryan Dawes from Dawes Paints
Dawes paints is a family-owned business in Hammersmith that started as a small local business and has now grown to a national enterprise. It was great to sit down and have a chat with Ryan Dawes about Dawes paints and its growth over the years.
Q: Tell me a bit about how the business started.
Well, my father initially had a property maintenance business in West London and ran that in the railway arches for 15 years. He then decided to move away from that sector and invest in paint stock to fill the arches: it was either paint or plumbing stock and investing in paint stock was a better economical option. When business picked up and became more popular I took over from my father in 2012. Dawes Paint has been running for around 9 years now and it's been increasingly successful ever since.
Q: Why did you decide it was right to take the business online?
Our business suffered during COVID-19 so we decided to start selling on online marketplaces. Our DIY hardware store was really popular because of our niche of being able to mix any design or colour. We also do next-day delivery before 12pm anywhere in the UK. Taking our business online has helped us grow from a local to a national level.
Q: Take me through the process of setting up the website.. Who helped with that?
Sam Liu he team at Webfx have been great with helping me set up the website. Olly has been doing a great job with SEO which helps our websites performance and visibility. Kate has also been doing excellent web design for our pages.
Q. How is selling on Amazon different from selling your products directly through your website?
Although selling through Amazon has been a good way of increasing our brand awareness, 15% of our sales end up going to them. We’ve been bulking up quantities of our products to cover the costs and try to redirect customers who shop on Amazon to our website. Selling on our website ultimately gives us more control and the ability for our other products to be visible to customers.
Q. How has the business changed over the years? It must be very different to how it was at the start.
Since lockdown, the world has become more direct to consumers. Because of the increase in online shopping, next day delivery is important for customers. It seems like customers have carried on shopping online because it works for them, and it’s become convenient to shop through social media and google searching. So we’ve definitely had to adapt to that change and become innovative in the ever changing times we live in.
Dawes paints can be found on Instagram: @dawespaints