Our Story

The tale of The Marvellous Group is rooted in family. Run by mother and daughter duo Joan and Kate, The Marvellous Group is what it is today thanks to their shared experiences, vision and hard work. Here, Kate tells our story in her own words:

“If you were to trace The Marvellous Group back to its absolute beginning, you’d find it in a little twinkle in Joan’s eyes when we she launched a second-hard store in Saudi Arabia. Our family had moved to the Middle East in 1999  and immediately she’d spotted a gap in the market - expats were moving around so much they often needed to quickly get rid of, or acquire, items for school, clubs and new homes. One family’s old roller skates were another family’s new found treasure and the shop soon became a big success. 

The desert however just could not compete with the English rain and even though we moved back to the UK, Joan’s entrepreneurial spirit had now been sparked. Swapping the world of hand-me-downs for hardware, her next project was a small store called Harrisons in Shropshire. Despite not knowing a thing about U bends or light bulb wattage, the hardware shop had potential, so Joan was up for the challenge and it wasn't long before she was adding her own stamp to the place (most noticeably this came in the form of bright pink tissue paper, which is now our signature brand colour).

Harrisons quickly became a cornerstone of the community but Joan had new ideas she wanted to bring to the local scene. Fuelled by her passion for cooking, she expanded the store’s offering in  2001, merging hardware stock with cooking products. Harrisons gradually evolved into a one-stop shop where customers could find whisks and pastry brushes alongside their screwdrivers and wrenches.

Always close by Joan’s side were my sister Laura and I - the three musketeers of Shropshire. Growing up we loved working in the shop. At 7 years old, Laura was drawing up flyers and in-house signage, while I took an instant liking to sales. Stood on a stool so I could reach the till, I’d be serving customers their silicone sealant with a huge smile on my face. I blame my genes, but even at the age of 8 I was always looking for a new challenge and this led to my role as Cooking Marvellous’ official “Saturday girl”. Every weekend would begin with me haggling daily commission rates and having watched the master at work, some Saturdays I’d be raking in a £50 commission - not bad for someone who could barely see over the till.  

Three years later, Joan and her Musketeers took all the lessons they’d learned from Harrisons and with their signature pink tissue paper in hand, they opened a new shop in Shrewsbury - Cooking Marvellous. With her team of her mini helpers (who by now were experts in the field of potato peeler recommendations), Joan’s Cooking Marvellous went from strength to strength and in 2005 the store launched online to become one of the first online cookware retailers in the UK.

Then, something very big happened to our local business, Amazon approached Cooking Marvellous to become a vendor on their site. This gave us a global platform and our previous sales began to look like a trickle compared to the flood of orders pouring in from all over the world. The back room of the shop had to be transformed into a pack and dispatch area and while Joan would be advising a customer in Denmark about induction hobs, Laura and I would be saddled up with piles of parcels to drop off at the post office on the way home from school (to this day, we still can’t believe we accepted being paid for this service in packets of Quavers.)

With online sales booming, we took on our first warehouse on the outskirts of Shrewsbury (infamously next door to a sex shop and kitted out by our many family trips to Ikea). Spread as thin as filo pastry, Joan began hiring more and more local team members to support the growing orders and by 2013 we were on the move again. Cooking Marvellous had quadrupled its turnover and that meant a much bigger warehouse, complete with a shiny new office.

At the same time, I turned 18 and went off to uni, only to return a week later realising I should have never left in the first place. Cooking Marvellous was where I wanted to be. As Piglet once said to Pooh “Life is much Friendlier with two” and Joan (aka Mum) and I started officially working side by side professionally to grow the business.  Like Joan, I was always looking out for gaps in the market and after dealing with a customer in Thailand who’d asked if we stocked Bisto, I realised there was an opportunity to add expat-loved foodie items to our catalogue. Within three days of coming up with the new business offering, I’d sold four jars of Marmite to Mandy in Massachusetts and thanks to the likes of Mandy our sales kept on rising. 

Joan and I worked all the hours under the sun, leaving work to find laptops plonked back on our laps and listing products whilst watching Cat Slater on Eastenders have her ups and downs with Alfie Moon (it was a justification for a household addiction for Eastenders at least). And it paid off. In 2014 we were given the honour of winning a Queen’s Award for Enterprise, and will forever remember jumping into a Black Cab and saying to the driver “Buckingham Palace, please!”.

Like any story out there, there is a beginning, a middle and an end. The middle part of our story was heartbreaking. After a long battle with cancer, my Dad passed away. This hit us all hard and would change our approach to work forever. While he was unwell, as a family we spent a lot of time away from the business and we were so lucky to have an amazing team behind us who were able to pick up where we left off, run the business and treat it like it was their own. With this support and things in perspective, we decided life, rather than work, would take precedence. Our passion was stronger than ever but we would prioritise efficient workflows and introduce new software and systems so everyone could leave at 5 on the dot, not take work home with them and enjoy time with their families. 

Alongside a new approach, we expanded into new product categories - health and beauty, petcare, fresh food, books and much more. Currently we have 1.5 million listings that are distributed to over 130 countries by a fantastic team of 20 talented employees. Although in 2018 we changed our name to The Marvellous Group to reflect our new diverse range, we’re still the same pink tissue paper wrapping, customer-centric, family-first team we were when we started out. This is by no means the end of our story and I can’t wait for all the exciting plans we have in store for the future of The Marvellous Group.