Direct Lighting Supplies
Launched from nothing in early 2024. Now £65k a month and 13,000 buyers.
- Services
- Art Direction, Branding, Content, Logo, UX/UI Design, Website, WordPress Development
- Client
- Direct Lighting Supplies
- Year
- 2024 - ongoing
- Website
- directlightingsupplies.co.uk
Challenge
A new ecommerce business, from a standing start, in a competitive category.
Direct Lighting Supplies didn't exist. No brand, no website, no product catalogue, no buyers. Just the intention to build a proper ecommerce business in a category dominated by big-box retailers and price-led competition, where an off-the-shelf theme and a generic checkout would not have been enough to stand out or convert.
Selling lighting online is deceptively hard. Long product lists, technical detail that matters, a checkout that has to handle trade and retail buyers, and a back-end that needs to talk to accounts, couriers and stock in a way that doesn't create hours of manual work every week. Getting any one of those wrong at launch would have cost the business dearly. Getting all of them right at launch, on a first go, was the actual brief.
Goal
Build the brand, the store, and the operations behind it. Every layer, in-house.
The scope stretched from logo to loading dock. Every part of the business had to be designed, built, integrated and taught to the people running it day to day.
The brand.
Full identity from scratch. Logo, typography, colour, tone and packaging direction, built to look credible in a market that mostly doesn't.
A custom WordPress theme.
Not a template. A bespoke build with a unique navigation system and a custom checkout designed around how lighting actually gets bought.
Product listings and catalogue planning.
Rob worked directly with the web agency and with staff on how the catalogue should be structured, categorised and photographed so it could scale to thousands of SKUs without falling apart.
UI collaboration and optimisation.
Ongoing back-and-forth on the front end, informed by real analytics and screen-recording feedback from actual customers.
Operations, integrations and training.
Sage integration for accounts, courier setup, packaging, pricing structures, web chat, and one-to-one training with staff so the team could run the business themselves rather than depend on the agency.
Analytics and reporting.
Proper measurement from day one, so decisions were made on data, not guesswork.
Result
From launch in early 2024 to £850k a year, and 13,000 buyers.
Direct Lighting Supplies went from zero to a working ecommerce business inside its first year, and has grown steadily ever since. The store launched from a standing start in early 2024 with no orders, no buyers and no customer base. Year one closed at £325k in revenue. Year two grew to £500k, a 54% lift. The 2026 forecast is £850k, tracking to a 70% year on year.
Monthly revenue is now £65k, up from £20k, a 3.25x increase. Orders sit at 400 to 600 a month, and the store has built a base of 13,000 buyers, a genuine repeat-purchase customer base rather than passing traffic. The brand, the site, the operations and the team behind it all now run as a single system, and the numbers are the receipts.
Receipts
From launch to £850k a year
Direct Lighting Supplies went from zero to a 13,000-buyer store doing £65k a month, since launching in early 2024.
13,000
Buyers to date
£65k
Revenue per month
500
Orders per month
Revenue trajectory
Year one · 2024
£325k
Year two · 2025
£500k
2026 forecast
£850k
Milestones
EARLY 2024
Store launched from zero
No orders, no buyers, no customer base.
YEAR ONE
£325k in first-year revenue
Built inside twelve months of trading.
YEAR TWO
Grew to £500k
A 54% lift on year one.
2026
Forecast £850k
On track for a 70% year on year.
ORDERS
400–600 orders a month
Up from zero at launch.
BUYERS
13,000 buyers
A repeat-purchase base, not just traffic.
MONTHLY
£20k → £65k a month
Monthly revenue up 3.25x.
TODAY
£65k a month and 13,000 buyers
Tracking toward £850k for the year, up from £325k in year one.
DIRECT LIGHTING SUPPLIES · FIGURES TO JULY 2026
