Get Off the Hamster Wheel

I recently went one-on-one with Cas Paton, founder and CEO of OnBuy.com, one of the fastest-growing marketplaces in the world, with more than eight million customers, 30 million products and four million monthly website visitors.

Adam: Thanks again for taking the time to share your advice. First thing’s first, though, I am sure readers would love to learn more about you. How did you get here? What experiences, failures, setbacks or challenges have been instrumental to your growth?

Cas: Thank you and likewise, Adam! I’m happy to say that 2020 has been a fantastic year for OnBuy, despite everything happening worldwide – we’ve initiated our globalization strategy, focusing first on English-speaking nations beyond the UK, and we’ve tripled our team to keep pace with the demands of the eCommerce market, which is growing faster than anyone could have predicted.

However, you’re completely correct in saying the road to where we stand today was not without setbacks. You don’t have to be business savvy to know that the world of online retail is dominated by a few giants, and for the longest time, wherever they went, the market was bound to follow.

I recognized early on, from feedback with clients and my peers in the industry, that there was an imbalance in the conversation happening between online retailers and the marketplaces through which they sold their products. While it’s true that huge, industry-defining strides were taken in logistics, fulfilment, pricing and all-round customer service by the major players of the eCommerce world, everything became skewed away from seller success and more towards fattening the bottom line of those giant online retailer-marketplaces.

So, I created OnBuy in 2016 to make the nature of selling and buying online more transparent and fair for everyone involved. Doing that against a backdrop of giants in the online retail space, I’m sure you know exactly the challenges we faced – the first simply being how brash a move it was seen to be. The big players are already there, the market is already locked in – who were we versus that?

We then had to take that conversation to both customers and online retailers. When you say to an online seller that you have a new marketplace for them to try, with more competitive rates and a philosophy of treating them fairly, their first answer is, “Great – so how many customers will I have?”.

Thus comes the classic start-up catch-22, because we then had to demonstrate we had those customers, while marketing to the public overall about a new place for them to find products online. “Great,” they said, “so what’s for sale?”.

Building a community of sellers and an audience of customers simultaneously, while demonstrating to each group that the other exists, all while promoting a new brand name and marketplace to do business with when the market already had such giant and established players, was an enormous challenge.

OnBuy overcame this because we emphasized the transparency and differentiators of our business model, such as the fact that we will never sell any of our own retail stock in competition with our seller base. This strategy, together with a homegrown marketing message that appealed to the primarily UK-based customer audience we began with, soon turned these initial challenges around for me and my team.

Adam: How did you come up with your business idea? What advice do you have for others on how to come up with great ideas?

Cas: I created OnBuy because I recognized that one of the biggest bottlenecks preventing online retailers from earning success was that the marketplaces they used were also retailers in their own right – and would behave like competitors, accordingly, if a seller’s success grew to become perceived as a threat.

To me, the answer was simple – to make a ‘true marketplace’, a secure platform for buyers and sellers to connect, without my business ever holding or selling any stock. Customers could enjoy a new place to find the products they wanted, with the knowledge they were helping independent businesses throughout and beyond the UK – and sellers could finally feel as though they were selling via a platform that would support and enable them, rather than restrict their accounts without warning or disrupt their cash-flow.

People often think that when I created OnBuy it was some kind of almost rebellious act against the giants of the eCommerce industry, but that’s not the case – I wanted to create a fairer way for us all to do business. As such, the advice I’d pass along is that entrepreneurs needn’t feel intimidated if a market they want to establish a business in is already crowded or saturated.

Instead, consider how your offering is different, how that difference is advantageous to your client base, and how you can most openly and honestly communicate that, even against the noise already being made by the established competition.

Adam: How did you know your business idea was worth pursuing? What advice do you have on how to best test a business idea?

Cas: During my earlier career in eCommerce consultancy and selling online, I realized something was amiss because I was hearing the same complaints and issues from my clients. The giant marketplaces were too automated to provide sellers the support they needed to grow, and would often just as readily pull the rug from under them to suit their own business model.

I had enough conversations over the years to know that sellers would react very enthusiastically to a new marketplace business model, which functioned more like a partnership – compared to that notion some players have of almost saying, “I’m letting you sell your products through my platform more or less as a courtesy.”

Because I’d had so many conversations surrounding this issue before establishing OnBuy, I was confident it’d be successful – although I didn’t anticipate the 24,000% growth we’ve experienced in our first four years. I’d definitely suggest that entrepreneurs base their business ideas on those recognized needs and almost unspoken desires for better solutions as indicated by the market – they are the surest way of guaranteeing a strong uptake for what you create.

Adam: What are the key steps you have taken to grow your business? What advice do you have for others on how to take their businesses to the next level?

Cas: While eCommerce is a growing industry worldwide, I absolutely can appreciate it’s a crowded, competitive market to be in. Emphasizing the differentiators in our business model, the trustworthiness of our brand and the ethics of our philosophy have been the cornerstones of our success.

I’ve definitely seen how the events of 2020 have created a period of uncertainty, but my team and I used this to our advantage by ensuring that we gave sellers a way to reach customers who often severely needed both essential goods, but also luxury items and other products too – it’s worth emphasizing that we at no point prevented anything ‘non-essential’ from being listed on OnBuy at any point of the outbreak, because we knew this would stifle independent businesses, choke their cash-flow and hugely damage their trust.

Understanding your place in the market, how you intend to reach the next peak, but also how you can create partnerships and positive relationships on your way to your ascent is what I feel is most crucial to success. You know what they say – be careful who you tread on, on your way up, and I’m determined not to step on anyone for OnBuy’s success.

Adam: What are your best sales and marketing tips?

Cas: While it may seem obvious, it definitely is worth repeating – people can sense when you’re passionate about something. If you can squeeze every drop of excitement and ambition that you genuinely feel into your marketing channels, it becomes an almost infectious energy.

Closer to home though, there has to be that transparency and honesty, especially in today’s world. Customers are tired of the scandals of big businesses, and retailers are tired of having to jump through hoops to earn an honest living. Stay transparent, convey your message and welcome feedback to help you course-correct as you go.

Adam: In your experience, what are the defining qualities of an effective leader? How can leaders and aspiring leaders take their leadership skills to the next level?

Cas: I make a point of hiring people who share my high-energy, passionate approach, but it’s important to me to speak to them like equals, rather than with the traditional leader-subordinate dynamic, because I truly believe that we are on an even playing field. Every person in my company is essential to our success and more broadly, I think employees today are more talented, but also more savvy, than they’ve ever been – so you just can’t take this leader-from-on-high approach, which I don’t believe in doing anyway.

As a more recent example, the lockdowns that affected the UK as the spread of the virus threatened the country forced us all to decentralize for a time, so I took cultivating morale and keeping our business agile to grow and succeed away from the physical office very seriously.

This agility in leadership is vital, especially in an industry like ours, and as we’ve grown our team, it’s enabled me to take a more open mind in ways that I myself found surprising too. I’d absolutely advise business leaders to remain open-minded and to never stop learning as a route to growth.

Adam: What is your best advice on building, leading and managing teams?

Cas: Employees definitely enjoy feeling part of the journey, so I always ensure I relate to them our latest wins, big and small, throughout the working week. However, transparency is important to me and it’s the heart of why I created this business, so I’m never shy about sharing where we need to improve too.

What’s important is to do this from a solutions-led perspective, and we don’t have a culture of blame-game or finger-pointing in my organization at all. When we recognize we need to improve, we get together and establish how to achieve it, where best to apply which talent, and then make it happen in a concerted team effort. In my experience, employees find that far more vindicating and powerful for both their personal and professional growth, and their feeling of loyalty to the business.

The way 2020 has panned out has meant we were encouraged, almost by accident, to look over a broader geographic spread for our staff as the company grew, and I’d definitely say this is solid advice for any entrepreneur. Ours is a connected age, and while I personally will always prefer the dynamism and buzz of an ambitious office, leaders shouldn’t be afraid to look further afield to integrate the best talent remotely too.

Adam: What are your three best tips applicable to entrepreneurs, executives and civic leaders?

Cas: Firstly, no matter who you are or the position you hold, you have to make time to step off the hamster wheel and reflect. This is essential, as taking a step back to reassess is the best way to make sure everything that you’re doing is propelling you towards your goals.

Secondly, make sure you stay accessible and keep an open dialogue with those around you. If you’re running a company, your biggest and most valuable asset is your employees – not only are they best placed to advise you on how to make workflows and processes more efficient, but they might be aware of things happening within the company that you aren’t. Make sure you take time to listen, and always keep an open door.

Lastly, don’t feel that you have to follow the crowd. I’ve got a picture in my office that’s been with me since day one, which says “What if you’re right and they’re wrong?”. The best ideas weren’t inspired by doing what’s always been done – you have to be bold enough to do things differently.

Adam: What is the single best piece of advice you have ever received?

Cas: As it happens, my earlier tip about taking time to reflect was inspired by that – British-Greek entrepreneur Theo Paphitis once wrote that it’s vital to get off the hamster wheel, reflect on the journey, and take in the scale of it all to get the perspective you need to push forward.

If you’ve got your head down every day, running in that wheel, you can’t always see that bigger picture, and it’s so important to. That advice has really stuck with me.

Adam: Is there anything else you would like to share?

Cas: It’s fascinating, and rewarding, to see that the appetite for independent business and for ethical, transparent eCommerce is so much higher than even I realized going into OnBuy’s formation.

As my team and I now work to replicate that business model in over 140 countries worldwide before year-end 2023, we anticipate that the online retail industry will continue to expand rapidly, yet sustainably – and as those customers ask more and more questions about where materials are sourced, how environmentally-conscious their deliveries are and how supportive of independent businesses their marketplaces can be, I believe we’re entering an incredibly exciting and intriguing time in which to be in this business.


Adam Mendler is the CEO of The Veloz Group, where he co-founded and oversees ventures across a wide variety of industries. Adam is also the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one on one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. Adam has written extensively on leadership, management, entrepreneurship, marketing and sales, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities and non-profit organizations.

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