We turned our struggling food stall into a £5.7m business – here’s how ...Middle East

When Emma and Stuart Colclough’s struggling handmade cheese store shut down after the Covid pandemic hit, the couple never imagined they would one day turn over £5.7m in one year.

Mrs Colclough, 32, from Lincolnshire, grew up helping her family make cheese and she spent her weekends selling the produce at markets. It was there that she met her now-husband, Stuart, now 40, who was selling jewellery.

The couple decided to turn Mrs Colclough’s craft into their own business, The Chuckling Cheese Company, and they continued selling most of their produce at markets and festivals. The business slowly grew and they hired staff to help with production.

But when the Covid pandemic hit, their only source of income was wiped out overnight and they thought they would have to pack it all in.

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Mr Colclough said: “We lost 90 per cent of our revenue overnight. It was terrible, we genuinely thought we were going to lose everything we’d built.”

But the couple had recently started selling some orders online. At the time, it accounted for barely 10 per cent of their revenue, but suddenly, they saw online orders “explode”.

“Within 24 to 48 hours since lockdown hit, our warehouse team were suddenly doing overtime,” Mr Colclough said. “Before the pandemic, online was only around 10 per cent of our turnover. Then it suddenly flipped to become the main part of our business.”

However, the boom did not last. Competition ramped up as sellers shifted online during the pandemic, and by 2023, they were struggling with sales again.

“We saw a dip in sales on other online marketplaces that had done well for us during the start of Covid, but had since become overcrowded with food sellers,” said Mr Colclough.

How they turned it around

Unsure how to turn their business around, the couple looked online and discovered TikTok Shop – a platform for sellers hosted on social media site TikTok.

With nothing to lose, the couple set up a store through the TikTok Shop Seller Centre, uploaded their best-selling items with photos and product descriptions, and linked back to their own TikTok account.

“It took us a bit of time to understand how TikTok Shop worked – things like setting up shipping, order management, and how customers buy directly through videos or “lives” (live streaming sessions). But it was quite simple once we got the hang of it,” Mrs Colclough said.

“We didn’t invest heavily in advertising or anything like that. We focused on just making short, fun videos showing our products being made, and we then started to work with affiliates,” she explained.

“One video about our pork scratchings went viral before Black Friday, and that changed everything. We saw sales come through almost straight away.”

The couple then did their first “live” – where you broadcast live to showcase your products to viewers on TikTok. The couple just talked about their products and how they were made – and they saw people buying items almost immediately.

Mrs Colclough said: “We just went live ourselves from the shop and talked about our products. The first few sessions brought in over £1,000 in sales in just 90 minutes.

“It started small, but after a few weeks of going live and posting consistently, we were getting hundreds of orders a day. Now, TikTok Shop accounts for a huge part of our overall sales.”

Growing the business further

Eventually, the couple started to feel that they could not grow as much as they liked with their existing business.

That is when they came up with the idea of DoughGirl, an online bakery store to complement their cheese brand. They launched it in February this year, and it took off immediately.

Mr Colclough said: “One afternoon, I said we should start making cookies, and two days later we’d ordered the oven and ingredients.”

The bakery initially launched on TikTok Shop, but after several items went viral and sales began to boom, the couple invested a hefty £250,000 into transforming one of their oldest warehouses into a dedicated bakery.

They then launched a dedicated website the following month, which has seen a lot of sales driven by their social media promotion.

“We went from making 200 items a day to 3,000 a day. We now have 32 people just in our bakery. It’s been non-stop since day one,” Mrs Colclough said.

“DoughGirl has been by far our biggest investment. We’ve expanded it four times since February, hired more team members, and we’ve also upgraded our machinery and equipment to keep up with demand.”

Across both brands, the couple now employs 86 staff.

Mr Colclough said: “We’re now finally at the point where we can take a salary from the business and have a fantastic leadership team in place beneath us, which means we can even take a bit of holiday – something that felt impossible before.”

“Last year, our turnover was £5.7m, and with the new bakery we’re hoping to exceed £10m over the next 12 months – with around half of that coming through TikTok Shop and the rest through other platforms,” he added.

“When we first started out, we had a van full of cheese and £1 in the bank heading to a weekend of country shows. It’s honestly been surreal.”

How to set up on TikTok Shop

TikTok Shop is an online marketplace where you can buy and sell products through the app. You need to be 18 to use it.

You need to sign up with your phone number and email address and fill out the application form. You will need a passport or driver’s licence, or business owner’s ID documents, if you are a corporate seller rather than a sole trader.

TikTok says your application should be approved within 1-2 days and you will be notified via email when you are set up.

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Once you are up and running, you can link your shop to your TikTok account and display your products in an in-app shop, or you can make videos showcasing your products.

You can also run live events to show off your goods and link through to what you are showing to drive sales.

In 2024, TikTok Shop says it generated around $33bn (around £25bn) in global sales.

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