The Sunday Times - 18 March 2007

WHEN Julie Edwards arrived in Britain at the age of 22 she intended to stay just one year while she did a masters degree in development economics at Cambridge university. But she fell in love with an Italian man and 20 years later is still here. Raised in New Jersey by her English physicist father and American mother, Edwards had planned to become a doctor until a .summer internship at a hospital made her change her mind. After taking her masters degree Edwards became an investment banker in the City for three years before going to business school in California. She returned to Britain to work for the European Bank for Reconstruction and development. It was only when she became pregnant with her first child in 1997 that she stumbled on her idea for a business. "I was buying the same pram as my Italian sister-in-law, who was also pregnant," she said. "Mine was going to cost three times at much in England as hers was in Italy even though they were identical. So my husband and I flew to Italy for the weekend, bought the pram and took it back, and the saving paid for the trip. It was ridiculous. It also made me conscious that things aren't always the same price in different countries. "After having the baby, Edwards went back to work as a management consultant, but two years later the idea of buying things more cheaply abroad resurfaced when she and her husband moved house. "We started doing the same thing I had done with the pram." she said. "We shipped in the bathroom fittings, the bed, the sofa and the entire kitchen from   Germany and Italy. "It saved a great deal of money. The kitchen, for example, cost €7.000 instead of £27.000 for an identical one in Britain. "We saved so much that we thought if we did this on the Internet we could save people a fortune," said Edwards. She spent €30,000 getting a prototype website built and then got friends to make test purchases to see if the system worked. She decided to concentrate on selling high-quality designer furniture sourced from the continent, saying: "I didn't want to be selling stuff that had to be assembled and when you got it all together it was wobbly and people thought it wasn't a very good deal. I wanted stuff that would have a real wow factor when it arrived. "Edwards started going round trade fairs to find what she wanted and then went to see the factories. She also set about raising some money from angel investors. But it was a struggle to persuade them that selling furniture over the internet was a good idea. "We got terrible reactions," she said. 'They said it would never work because people can't feel it or sit on it or touch it. "Fortunately, she eventually found a single investor who believed in the concept, and he put in several hundred thousands pounds for a substantial minority stake. To promote the site. Edwards initially spent a lot of money on advertising in interior design magazines. But the take-off was very slow. "The first two months were very sobering because
							Sitting pretty: Edwards has built up her online business to sales of £5m by offering some of the best deals in Europe.
							we launched the website just when the dotcom bubble was bursting and there was all this fear among the public about what would happen if an online company went bankrupt before their goods were delivered. "Gradually, however, orders started to come in, with people typically trying out the service by buying a lamp before placing a big order. Edwards also discovered that a large proportion of her customers were men, who found her site a good way of furnishing a flat with minimal effort. The biggest appeal was that prices for furniture and accessories sold on the site were up to 40 per cent lower than in British furniture stores. With so much money being spent on advertising, however, Edwards realised that things had to change. Fortunately, the emergence of Google meant that she was able to switch to internet-based advertising, which cost a tenth of what she had been spending. Another big step forward was the decision in 2005 to print a catalogue. "The catalogue has really transformed the business because it means we are at the front of people's minds when they come to buy." she said. Edwards will also search for furniture that she does not stock herself. "Half of what we sell is people writing with a wishlist of things they want to buy.   "With sales of £5m this year, Edwards thinks that, while so many dotcom businesses failed, hers survived because Europebynet provides a useful service. "We survived because what we are doing actually makes a huge amount of financial sense for our customers. If they are doing up a whole house, they can save tens of thousands of pounds by buying from us. The idea of saving all this money would be tempting whether or not the interact existed. The internet just allows us to reach a lot more people in a lot more countries. "Now aged 43 and married with three children, Edwards says that she is driven by the desire to prove wrong those people who said her idea would never work: "I am very stubborn. I don't readily admit defeat. And I think it is very important to know a little about a lot of things. I really like a day where I do ten minutes of this and two hours of that. That is really fun for me, whereas I think for some people it would drive them insane. "She has this advice for budding entrepreneurs: "You need to have something that is genuinely a good idea and which stands the test of not just being a clever new nifty way of doing something but is something that actually has a value to people." Rachel Bridge