I’ve never done an MBA. But I’ve spent the last year learning more about ecommerce from the seat of a delivery car than I think any classroom could teach.
Two hundred parcels a day, five square miles of Preston, every single day. You start to notice things. Patterns. Frustrations. The gap between what a platform promises and what actually lands on someone’s doorstep.
You see the return before the company does
By the time a retailer’s systems register a return, I’ve usually already delivered the replacement, picked up the original, or watched someone stand at their door explaining why the item “just wasn’t right.” Returns aren’t a line on a spreadsheet from where I’m standing. They’re a conversation, a shrug, sometimes genuine disappointment. Ecommerce platforms optimise for conversion. They rarely optimise for the version of the product that actually survives contact with a real home.
Packaging is a promise, and most companies break it
You learn very quickly which brands care about the unboxing experience and which ones don’t. Some parcels arrive crushed, taped six times, clearly repackaged by someone under pressure. Others arrive exactly as intended, protected properly, considered. That difference isn’t about cost. It’s about whether a company thinks about the customer after the sale is made — or stops thinking about them the second the payment clears.
Delivery windows are a fiction most of the time
“Your parcel will arrive between 9am and 1pm” is a sentence platforms print with total confidence and very little control over. Traffic, volume, weather, staffing — dozens of variables sit between that promise and the doorstep. Shoppers build their whole day around a window that was, in truth, a rough estimate dressed up as a guarantee. I understand why platforms do it. I also understand, more than most, how often it doesn’t hold.
People don’t remember the product. They remember how it arrived
I’ve delivered thousands of parcels to the same streets, the same houses, over and over. What sticks with people isn’t usually the product itself — it’s whether it turned up when it was supposed to, whether it looked cared for, whether the whole experience felt like someone on the other end gave a damn. That’s the part of ecommerce that never shows up in a pitch deck, and it’s the part that decides whether someone buys from you again.
Why this matters for how I’m building ShopWithMore
Every principle behind ShopWithMore is shaped by what I see on that round every single day. Transparency about delivery timing. Honesty about what a product actually is. Respect for the fact that a parcel isn’t just an item — it’s a small moment in someone’s day that we have the chance to get right or get wrong.
You can build a platform from data alone. I’d rather build one shaped by what actually happens when the doorbell rings.