Merry Christmas And A Happy New Year From The Gramersi Team

Dear Gramersi Community,

Like many of the businesses we write about, we launched in 2020, at the height of the pandemic.

Although COVID-19 began to dissipate this year (with Boris Johnson deciding to remove all lock-down restrictions), new crises emerged. Arguably, the biggest UK crisis of this year (2022) was the recession announcement, and the new cost of living crisis, – born out of the destruction caused by COVID-19, and the war in Ukraine.

Unfortunately, this has led to Brits cutting back on their spending, – creating a new hurdle for small businesses, particularly in the retail sector.

However, as the Founder/CEO of Gramersi.com – a platform dedicated to supporting small retail businesses, I see it as my duty to send you ALL some words of encouragement.

Regardless of the current climate, we have shown the nation that you can always come out on top, and we’ll continue to do so in 2023. I believe that the entrepreneurial mindset of this country will bring new success stories and new innovations in 2023, and as always, we’ll be the first ones to tell you about them.

Ultimately, it’s small businesses that will bring us out of this recession.

So don’t give up. Instead: Revise. Change. Pivot. Adapt.

Our biggest question of 2022 has been: ‘How does one turn a magazine into an ecommerce marketplace?’ 

In case you didn’t know, in May this year (2022), we stealth-launched our brand new marketplace, and I’ll be the first one to admit that we had no idea how it would go.

  • Would brands be interested in selling through us?
  • How easy or difficult would it be for us to get those brands to sign up?
  • Would our readers be interested in purchasing products from this new platform?
  • And last but not least, what bugs, fixes, features, and roll-outs would we need to focus on, in order to make this new platform a success?

Here’s how we got on.

Not only did we manage to register 60+ brands to sell through us (and list 400+ products prior to our big launch in January 2023), but our traffic/user-base continued to grow, and we generated some early sales through the marketplace, putting us in good stead for 2023.

However, we couldn’t have done this without you, so I just want to say: thank you for believing in us, and thank you for your patience. I/we really can’t thank you enough for continuing to support what we do, for being a part of our community, AND for letting us be a part of yours.

Related Products

Next year will see us focus our full attention on the launch and growth of the brand new Gramersi marketplace.

Here are a few words from our other two co-founders, Ashley and Laurene:

“2022 has been a year of success for us. We have seen our monthly readership grow by 180%, and we completed our initial rollout of the Gramersi marketplace,” said Ashley Gibbs (Co-Founder and CTO at Gramersi).

“I want to thank everyone who has collaborated with us, sent us their stories, signed up as a vendor, placed an order, or even just read an article. You have helped us to grow our business – making it possible for us to help other SMEs grow. Merry Christmas and have a great 2023,” added Ashley.

“2022 was a rocky year for everyone, however despite these difficult times, we have continued to grow, and to feature amazingly innovative and creative brands,” said Laurene Rey-Millet (Co-Founder and Chief Journalist at Gramersi).

“Thank you so much to everyone who has supported us. Have a great Christmas (we have some cracking gift ideas in the shop by the way), and see you in 2023,” added Laurene.

And on that note, I’d like to wrap up by wishing YOU a VERY Merry Christmas. As a team, we are sending you bucket-loads of love, positivity, happiness, and health.

Thanks,

George Taylor

Gramersi.com

Oh. And don’t forget to check out our special Christmas-and-New-Year video, featuring Emma Thornton from True Skincare, below.