Meet Stuart McClure, co-founder and CMO of LovetheSales.com

Tell us about the founder behind the brand.

To be honest, I’m a pretty normal guy with a fairly typical upbringing. What I would say makes a difference though, is the fact that my wife and I had our first son at 18, so really young. Being a parent has taught me a few critical lessons that have helped in business. It certainly gave me the drive to achieve but has also helped me understand psychology, behaviour and a lot of the softer skills that are really important.

I’m a huge advocate of understanding bias in decision making, which has also been borne out of parenthood. It’s always been fascinating to me to see decisions being made and implemented, based on pure bias, rather than evidence. I’ve sought to remove bias from decision making as much as I can and am often pushing my team to learn more about it. 

What inspired you to launch your business and what is the end goal?

Initially, we were inspired by the fact that shopping discounts, quickly and easily, was difficult. You could browse yourself, but that means you’ll never cover every possibility. You could also check out flash sale sites, but they had a limited selection. To truly shop every sale, they had to be put in one place. 

Once we started to dig into that idea though, we realised that there was an equally large challenge for retailers. Clearing their inventory was becoming increasingly difficult, and their margins were suffering dramatically with existing solutions. Retailers trying to clear themselves meant their website was swamped in discounts, cannibalising full-price sales and damaging brand equity. Simultaneously, existing solutions had retailers over a barrel, meaning they made a loss when clearing products that had become terminal.

We realised we had an idea that could simultaneously solve a fundamental issue for retail, as well as price-conscious consumers. And so, our marketplace was born.

How do you set yourself apart from other businesses in your industry?

I’d say it’s a combination of our solution (as described above) and our approach to technology. We try and solve as much with technology as we can, to allow us to ensure our employees focus their brains on the big thinking challenges. For example, we see millions of products a day - to merchandise them would be a never-ending task. And for those doing it, it would be quite mundane work. To that end, we built our own technology to solve that issue. That is just one of the massive challenges we’ve solved, but it gives you a feel for our approach.

Keeping an eye on the numbers in any business is important. How do you ensure that you’re always up to date?

We do two key things here. The most important part is determining which metrics are the ones that count. Define what actually moves the needle for the business. There are so many metrics to keep an eye on (all of which have importance in one way or another), but, most likely, a small number of really key pieces of information that boil down critical aspects of what you’re doing into a single stat. Once you’ve identified that, you need it readily available - if it takes hours of excel work each week to get it, then it’s not easy! We’ve built a dashboard that contains our priority metrics, then separate ones for secondary metrics and so on. 

What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learnt so far as an entrepreneur?

If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.

I think this for three reasons. Firstly, you’ll only ever improve your knowledge, and therefore your chances of success, by learning - by being with smarter people you’ll learn more. Secondly, because you should always look to hire smarter people than you in any areas of weakness or aspects of business you cannot focus on entirely. And finally, because you simply cannot be right all the time - the input of (smarter) experts is essential when it comes to making well-rounded decisions. 

With all the success stories around entrepreneurship and how innovative people have to be to take the leap. How do you think you’ve innovated your sector and why?

Retail is an industry that is slow to take up technology effectively. This is not because people do not want to, but because it’s a juggernaut. It is exceptionally difficult to engage new systems, switch from legacy methods or rebuild critical aspects of tech. It is hard to do effectively, without disrupting BAU. We’ve innovated with our business model itself, but also in the fact that we’ve made our tech exceptionally simple for retailers to take advantage of. We can have a new brand live on our site in minutes.

What are your thoughts on failure?

Failure is an essential part of learning. Think of a baby learning to walk - they fail constantly, but every little fall and tumble teaches them a tiny nugget of information that’s a piece in the puzzle to finally being able to walk. To that end, failure is acceptable, as long as it teaches you something.

Where I do have an issue with this line of thinking though, is that it has become a crutch. Any failure happens - no worries, I learnt something. But, did you? 

I think you can only apply this mentality if you first define specific parameters for what you’re doing. Then, once you test you can evaluate against those parameters so that, whether the test is a success or a failure, you know specifically what you have learnt. I don’t think it’s acceptable to just do a bunch of things with no forethought, have it not perform, and then just play the ‘I learnt something’ card.

Do you have a morning routine or ritual to get your day started on the right foot?

On a typical day (no lockdown), my morning starts about 05:45 as it takes me a couple of hours to commute into London. For me though, this works. The commute means a mile walk first thing, then, after an hour on the train I choose to walk the two miles to the office, rather than tube it because it means I get six miles walking in a day which is great exercise. That tends to get me into the office around 08:00 which means I get half an hour or so before people start arriving in the office. That’s when I clear emails from the previous day. I try to limit email activity to first part of the day and the commute home - too many people are responsive to their inbox, replying as soon as emails come in etc. which is very disruptive for your concentration and efficiency.

If you could be in a room with four entrepreneurs, who would they be and why?

Arnold Schwarzenneger - although he can be a bit of a caricature, he’s an exceptionally talented guy when you learn about his business life, and his personal drive is truly inspiring. Plus, he’s Arnie!

Joy Mangano - the inventor of the Miracle Mop, purely because she was very creative with the solutions she invented. They had a practicality about them that seems so obvious, but only once you see them. Plus, she had the tenacity to make things happen, and the desire to give others an opportunity.

James Dyson - very similar to Joy Mangano in terms of why, but more to try and understand how he sees opportunity and ideas in the everyday. I read about his inspiration behind cyclonic vacuuming and it’s amazing that from what he saw he came up with vacuuming. 

Daniel Kahnemann - to be honest, this guy is not really an entrepreneur, but he has made a lot of money from books. I have included him because his book ‘Thinking Fast and Slow’ is a fascinating introduction to psychology and bias.

What are your top tips for entrepreneurs wanting to get their business out there?

I’d say the most important thing is to really analyze your idea from every angle. What’s different about it? Why is it better than everything else that solves the problem your business solves? Why will it succeed where others haven’t? 

Fairly generic advice.

But, the next step is to then look at your answers to those questions and analyse them for bias. Take the top 20 cognitive bias’ and really dig in, honestly and openly. What are you missing? What are you ignoring? How is your bias affecting your view?

Doing this will give you a far better perspective of how viable your business is, new areas to consider and new opportunities you may not have considered.

I say this because starting a business is easier than ever, but keeping one alive has never been harder. 

What plans do you have for LovetheSales.com over the next two years?

Expanding our footprint and reach to customers and partners in the US is a big focus for us - we were recently commended by Secretary of State for International Trade and President of the Board of Trade, Liz Truss, at the United Nations as a leading UK tech and eCommerce scale up. 

We’re expanding our business to the United States with support from the Department of International Trade. The upcoming international expansion is projected to boost revenue by £9 million over the next five years.