A FIRM which sells home and garden accessories is seeing huge growth thanks to selling its products online.

Rinkit was started by Richard Goss in 2008, when he spotted a home-made cocktail kit in a wholesale catalogue.

He placed an order and sold them online, beginning a process that ten years later would see him at the head of a multi-million pound international business.

He said: “I was working for a large corporate company and I really enjoyed it. It was a great job with a very good salary and benefits. But there was just something missing.

“I’ve always had a passion for selling, dating right back to when I dropped out of school to sell washing machines.

“I really get a buzz out of it so one day when I was flicking through a wholesaler’s catalogue and saw a cocktail set, I couldn’t resist the urge to buy a few and try selling them.

“With just a few hundred pounds I placed an order, listed the items online and made a little bit of profit on each one.

“Every lunchtime I was driving to the post office to ship orders that had come in the previous day. The entrepreneur in me knew I had hit on something.

“When I resigned people couldn’t believe I was leaving my job but it was something I knew I could do.”

After that initial success, Richard was encouraged further when his best friend Rob Lowe got on board.

The pair ran the business from a spare room in their house and used the basement for storage.

Richard said: “My brother suggested that we started selling on Amazon and at first I didn’t think we could do that.

“Back then, I didn’t realise SMEs and entrepreneurs could sell through Amazon Marketplace but Rob was keen to explore it and very quickly we got smarter with our listings.

“We started the business with our own money and no outside investment and at times it was very hand to mouth.

“If we got an order on a Monday we ordered it from the supplier on a Tuesday and shipped on a Wednesday.”

The tipping point came for Wick-based Rinkit when the duo decided to create their own brands, cutting out middlemen like importers and wholesalers.

Richard said: “I travelled to Mumbai, completely out of my depth, to meet a factory owner about placing an order for some stainless steel products.

“By then we’d moved to a proper premises and things were becoming much more professional.

“Our initial order from India was such a success that we reinvested the money straight back into more orders.

“We knew that with our own brands nobody could copy us. Our products aren’t pretentious or flashy but they are all practical things that every home needs.”

Amazon Marketplace allows businesses and entrepreneurs to sell their products directly to customers through the Amazon website.

Rinkit also used Fulfilment by Amazon, where businesses enlist Amazon to look after the stocking, packing and shipping of their products.

They are now one of thousands of small businesses in the South East selling millions of pounds of products on Amazon Marketplace and are quickly expanding into new territories.

He said: “Around 53 per cent of our turnover this year will come from our UK Amazon sales. Sales from Europe, the USA and Canada account for 6.5 per cent but next year those areas are our focus.”

With an annual turnover of £11 million and 50 per cent year on year growth, Rinkit is constantly growing.