Most people don’t quit something because it’s failing. They leave because it’s working—but only just. A project that eats weekends, drains savings, and gives just enough back to keep hope alive. There’s a weight in that middle place—when things are growing, but slowly; when the future seems clear, but the present is still hungry. For founders bootstrapping a consumer business, that stretch feels especially sharp. Lauren Johnson Ginn and her co-founder Dan are in that place now. Just over a year into running Farmfetch, their online marketplace for premium British food, they’re focused on reaching scale without losing control. The idea took shape in 2023, after years working in digital marketing. The co-founders spotted a growing appetite for ethical, local food—and saw how little infrastructure existed to connect those buyers with independent producers. That gap became their opportunity.

“We use our own money, so it has to count.”

“We don’t hold stock. We don’t warehouse. The producers fulfill orders directly,” Lauren explains. That decision—a dropship-style marketplace model—keeps their overhead low but adds complexity on both sides. “We had to build both a network of producers and a customer base from zero,” she says. At launch, that meant emailing farmers and producers, DMing on Instagram, even approaching vendors at food festivals. Today, over 100 British suppliers are on the site, many of them award-winning. But supply was only half the job. “The priority now is growing revenue,” she says. “That’s what makes it worthwhile for our producers to stay.” With thin margins, high customer acquisition costs, and seasonal buying cycles, timing and efficiency matter. “We’re constantly testing things. Some don’t work, and we roll them back,” Lauren adds. “But that’s part of doing it bootstrapped. You have to get really good at deciding what’s worth spending on.”

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“We’ll hire when we’re falling over—that’s the bootstrapped way.”

The team handles nearly everything in-house. Dan focuses on operations and vendor relationships; Lauren leads marketing, from CRM to content. “We both came from a marketing background, so we’ve covered most of the digital skill set,” Dan says. Still, they bring in contractors when necessary—like hiring a Shopify agency for site updates or a media team during Easter to push paid search campaigns. “It’s always tactical. We use our own money, so it has to count,” Lauren adds. Their biggest lever right now is retention. With about 10,000 email subscribers, they’re focused on CRM and organic content. “Paid ads are a loss leader for us,” Dan explains. “But building that database means we can reduce dependency on paid over time.”

Despite their lean setup, Farmfetch has grown year-on-year—currently tracking at 3x annual revenue. Profit margins remain slim, with net revenue averaging around 5%. But their model is built to scale. “A lot of our costs are fixed,” Dan says. “So if we grow revenue, margins improve without needing more infrastructure.” That’s also shaping how they think about future funding. “We’re open to loans or investment,” Lauren notes, “but only once we’re confident in where the money will go—like improving logistics, or maybe a basic 3PL setup to streamline delivery.”

What’s next depends on hitting the next level of sales. Right now, operations rely on spreadsheets and manual reporting. “We license backend tech to split orders across producers,” Dan explains, “but everything else—commission tracking, payouts, performance summaries—is manual.” Long term, they want to build their own backend platform. “It would let us improve the vendor experience, and scale without drowning in admin,” he says. Hiring, too, is on the horizon. “Probably customer service first,” Lauren adds. “As orders grow, that’s the most time-consuming piece we need to offload.”

For now, they’re staying close to the details. Every order, every pound, every metric gets a second look. “It’s a marketing and service business,” Dan says. “That’s where we’ll spend, when we can.” The rest—warehousing, logistics, infrastructure—isn’t in the picture yet. And they’re fine with that. “We’ll hire when we’re falling over,” he laughs. “That’s the bootstrapped way.”

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