Meet Bother: The brand taking the hassle out of household shopping
Meet Doug - Founder & CEO of Bother. Doug took his passion for improving our impact on the environment and the pain of shopping for household items and created Bother, so you never have to worry about running out of boring basics ever again!
Here at The Doers, we are constantly on the hunt for innovative start-ups that can help make our lives a little easier. Being self-employed isn’t easy (hello constant juggling), so discovering brands and businesses that can help put some ease into our lives and the lives of our Doers in some way is always front of mind.
Jess was scrolling through Instagram when she came across Bother and it’s safe to say it grabbed her attention from the word go. The clean branding, communicative website and clear proposition on how it solves a common problem ticked a lot of boxes.
Bother’s aim is clear - to stop us wasting time and energy shopping for those boring household essentials. Essentially, this makes way for increasing the amount of shopping you do with the locals, which is more important than ever before now!
We talk to Bother’s founder, Doug about how he identified a problem and a gap in the market, came up the idea and turn it into a fully functioning business. We talk about the impact of COVID-19 on Doug’s launch plans and how reducing our impact on the environment sits at the heart of what he does. As well as some of the things he learnt along the way, his tips for starting a business and the role social media has played since launching.
We also have a very special Doers code for you so you can give Bother a try yourself and take the bother out of your household shopping!
“We have big ambitions to make a proactive long-term impact on the way we all shop. The world is changing and relying on our old habits is becoming damaging.”
Tell us a bit about Bother and how/why it got started?
I was fed up with running out of toilet roll! I felt passionately that shopping for household essentials, the really boring bits, shouldn’t be hard or time consuming. I did a little digging and found that travelling to and from places such as the shops accounts for a third of UK greenhouse emissions. Plus, the average UK household spends over 18 hrs a month on shopping (7 of those is purely travel). I wanted to take all the boring bits and make it easier, quicker and better for the environment. Leaving customers free to shop locally for all the fun stuff. A big part of Bother’s ability to take those boring bits and make it simpler and easier is the currently developing Bother Brain™. Our Bother Brain will be learning consumers’ shopping habits and behaviours. This means that when you return to the site to place your next order your box will be prefilled with the stuff you need - no more shopping lists!
What's the start up process been like for you? How did the business get off the ground?
My background is as an analyst and fund manager. I saw how efficiently ecomm was done elsewhere in the world and felt that there was a gap in the UK market for efficient ecommerce. I was keen to get the right talent on board to make the Bother Brain™ and the Bother brand become the solution consumers hadn’t realised they needed. A lot of our current household shopping is done without thinking and actually is not only inefficient on our time and our wallets, but also does huge (and wholly unnecessary) environmental damage. Bother wants to show everyone there is another way and change shopping habits for good.
Covid-19 had a massive impact on UK shoppers, the supply chains and lack of secure ecommerce frameworks let a lot of people down. I knew that Bother could provide a solution and respite to a lot of people, so it was decided to launch earlier than planned to try and assist key workers.
After a couple of weeks serving key workers Bother was launched nationwide offering next day delivery. We’re primarily focusing on paid social and referral to get the message out there.
Who's your target audience?
The ambition of Bother is to help everyone save time from household shopping. However, we recognise that during the early days our range and services may suit others better. Talking to current customers, it seems we supply a great gap in the market for those that already shop locally at bakers and grocers, or with local fresh delivery services such as Farmdrop or Riverford, and are looking for a convenient addition to supply the boring bits. We offer a wide range of household brands as well as eco alternatives.
You talk on your site about the business being environmentally friendly. Tell us more about what you do behind the scenes to stand by this and what's on the agenda going forward?
Together we can make a real difference. We believe it’s up to companies (like us) and not individuals to provide solutions to the current crisis. We want to make better choices more easily available while also ensuring consumers’ current choices are more environmentally efficient. It starts with saving the transport time and carbon emissions of your current shopping habits (we reckon we can half this with one monthly delivery from Bother instead of the multitude of deliveries you might receive from Amazon or other suppliers). This alone could have a surprisingly large impact on the average households total monthly carbon emissions.
We have big ambitions to make a proactive long-term impact on the way we all shop. The world is changing and relying on our old habits is becoming damaging. For change on a mass scale we know we need economically viable, easy alternatives for both our customers and the industry. With simple choices, delivered more efficiently we hope to make it easier for our customers to have a positive impact. At Bother, you can shop for the usual products you know and love as well as the best eco-alternatives and refills in the market. By providing this solution, we are able to clearly show the benefit of increased investment into sustainability to some of the world’s largest consumer goods companies (with whom we are already working). We believe this will encourage and speed up long term change.
How important has social media been for you during your first couple of months?
Social community and brand is of huge importance to Bother. The boring bits of your household shop are very low interest and we are called Bother precisely because we want to take that Bother out of consumers’ lives. We Bother, so you don't have to. Social media is where we can build trust, share our brand stories and our mission and it’s been a large part of growing initial awareness in the brand.
What advice would you give someone with a problem-solving business (like yours) to get it off the ground?
Having the right teams / people around during the early days makes a huge amount of difference. By getting those on board who know what they are doing both in building a product and in building a brand means that you can create something that scales and something that you can build a community around.
Do you ever work with freelancers? If so, can you tell us what you look for?
Passion is a huge one for Bother. It’s difficult to get passionate about laundry liquid (or is it?) but we think it’s easy to be passionate about how your skills can make consumers’ lives easier.
We love working with passionate people and have worked with both freelancers and agencies during our set up process.
What are your plans for the future of Bother?
We hope to change the way people shop. We believe that Bother can help consumers to save time and money, so help them to positively impact the environment they live in. Therefore allowing them to support and shop more locally.
You can visit Bother at webother.co.uk and all Doers have been given an amazing £15 off their first shop - just use DOER15 at the checkout
Minimum spend £50. First time customers only. Not valid with any other offers.
