The beginnings of Poole Bay Holdings are based on two companies selling very different products but that were perfect for direct marketing.

The first company, The No Butts Bin Company (NBB) which was founded over 30 years ago in 1993. Very much a family affair, the business was founded by Martyn Bright with his wife Suzanne and run from their home in Barnet, London. Using a combination of product cards, magazine advertising and direct marketing NBB was the first company to sell outdoor cigarette bins. It became very successful, creating a new market many years ahead of its time, when more and more companies were banning smoking indoors. NBB followed the cigarette bins with the launch of a range of Smoking Shelters, of which thousands have subsequently been sold in the UK, USA, Germany and France. The No Butts Bin Company USA is based in Madison, Connecticut and is now over 25 years old. Sometime in 1994, NBB began selling their cigarette bins through a catalogue company of which Mike McKenna was the Marketing Director and a future friendship was formed.

Seven years later after the beginnings of NBB, in January 2000, together with his wife Fiona McKenna (now Poole Bay Holdings Sales Director), Mike McKenna launched CMUK Visual Safety selling health and safety law posters in Banbury, Oxfordshire. Another family affair, the company was formed in response to the government deciding that all companies needed to change their old health and safety law posters by June 2000. Within two months of the business’s launch, CMUK was receiving hundreds of orders per day. On one particular day Fiona opened post bags to find over 700 orders that needed sorting and processing – together with telephone and fax orders over 1000 orders were processed on that day alone. To cope with the rush, other members of the McKenna family were seconded to help pick and pack thousands of posters. In March 2000, due to the sheer volumes of of orders were being processed and lack of space, it was decided to switch the fulfilment of the posters to NBB’s premises in Poole Dorset. By July 2000, CMUK had built a database of 40,000 customers and passed £1 million in sales. However, by September of 2000, sales of the law posters were rapidly diminishing and it was clear that CMUK needed to find other products to market.

As the 40,000 law poster customers had bought a product to comply with the law it was decided to launch a catalogue known as Eureka Direct selling compliance products. The catalogue specialised in selling safety and first aid supplies as legally all businesses in the UK needed to ensure their employees had access to a first aid items in the event of an accident. As a result yet another Poole Bay Holding niche business was born!

A number of Poole Bay Holdings businesses were amongst the early adopters of ecommerce. In 2001 Eureka Direct and The No Butts Bin Company launched their first websites which were instant hit.  Prior to the websites most Poole Bay Holdings customers still ordered from paper catalogues with telephone support or by faxing or posting an order form. In fact, by 2005, PBH had mailed over 20,000,000 catalogues. But then the Internet arrived and it all began to change…..

With a website, we didn’t need to pay for costly print reruns when prices changed or adding new products. It’s was easier to run an automated product update on our websites and share the news via emails. More importantly for our customers, we were able to cut costs and work more efficiently too. While we still mail over 1 million catalogues per year, but most of our business is now online.

• Following the launch of our first two websites we took to ecommerce like a duck to water and began researching new niche websites. However, it took us a further four years to launch the next generation. In 2007, we launched www.JustGloves.co.uk which quickly became one the leading online suppliers of disposable gloves in the UK. In 2008, this was followed by www.FirstAid4Less.co.uk and in 2009 we launched www.MediSupplies.co.uk and a number of other niche sites. By the end of our first decade, PBH was one of the UKs leading ecommerce groups . Our business model proved there was a market for niche websites and it was the beginnings of much more success to come.