Niche ecommerce, sold
Built a specialist consumer brand from a bedroom, scaled it to a six-figure run rate on paid social, and sold it to a buyer in the same vertical. Took three years.
EcommerceAbout
Twenty years of starting things. Now helping you start yours.
I'm Richard. I run Sandwich Business out of — you guessed it — Sandwich, in Kent. I've spent the last twenty-odd years building, growing, and selling small online businesses. I do this work now because AI has collapsed the cost of the same playbook to a tenth of what it used to be, and I'd rather pass that saving to Kent operators than watch a London agency mark it up.
The short version.
Five online businesses built from a spare room. Five exits. Around five million between them. None were tech unicorns — they were ordinary ideas, executed with discipline and a willingness to learn the boring bits properly.
What changed in the last two years is AI. The slog that used to fill my evenings — writing copy, fixing code, sorting analytics, untangling tax — has collapsed to a fraction of the time. The same thinking still applies; the labour is gone.
I'd rather not spend the next decade building one more business of my own. I'd rather help fifty Kent operators get the same advantage, before the bigger agencies wake up and put their prices back up.
I'm not an agency. I'm an operator who has actually started, run, broken, fixed and sold this stuff. You get me directly — not a junior with a checklist or an account manager with a slide deck.
— Richard
Track record
What I have actually shipped.
I am keeping names off the public site for the buyers' sake, but I am happy to walk through the detail in person. The pattern matters more than the brands.
SaaS for small operators, sold
A tool that solved an ugly admin problem for a specific trade. Recurring revenue, low churn, sold to a strategic buyer who wanted the customer list.
SaaSLocal services group, sold
Bought a cluster of underperforming local service sites, fixed the basics (Google, reviews, follow-up), trebled bookings and exited inside two years.
Local servicesContent + affiliate, sold
One quirky niche, a properly written site, patience. Paid the mortgage for years before a strategic buyer made an offer that was hard to refuse.
ContentMobile-first marketplace, sold
A simple two-sided app for a hobby community. Word of mouth, no paid acquisition, sold to a hobbyist with deeper pockets and a bigger vision.
MobileNordSys, today
The umbrella for what I do now: AI agents, automation, web and app builds — all priced for a Kent business owner, not a London marketing department.
LiveHow I think
The handful of rules that keep me out of trouble.
Smallest version first
The first thing live should be embarrassingly simple. Real customers tell you more in a week than a strategy doc tells you in a year.
You own everything
Domain, accounts, code, content, the lot. No lock-in. If we ever part ways, you walk out with the business intact.
Plain English, always
If I can't explain it without using a buzzword, I don't understand it well enough to charge you for it.
Ship in fortnights
Most projects should be live, in some form, inside two to three weeks. If we are six weeks in with nothing real to show, we have got it wrong.
Fixed prices
You see the number before we start. If the scope grows, we agree the change in writing. No surprise invoices, ever.
AI is a tool, not the point
Customers do not care that AI is involved. They care that things load fast, reply quickly, and do not waste their time. AI lets us do that for less.
Want a conversation about your idea?
One hour, no charge, no slide deck. Tell me where you're stuck and I'll tell you whether I can help — and what the next step would cost.