As the son of a hairdresser, Daniel Crown was always in and out of salons as a child. But he "never felt passionate about learning how to cut hair". So when his father secured him an internship at a small web-design firm, Crown jumped at the chance. "It was 1996 and the dotcom boom was just beginning I wanted to be part of something exciting."
He impressed in his first three months and was offered a job. The firm grew quickly and soon had around 50 of its own websites. But such rapid success came at a price the small firm "was spreading itself too thin with so many sites". After two years the firm was facing "serious funding problems". So in 1998 Crown offered to leave on the condition that he could take one of the firm's fledgling sites Lookfantastic.com with him.
The site was supposed to be an online hair products retailer, but when he took it over it was barely trading. Crown decided it needed a new e-commerce platform that would make it easier for customers to buy products and a new design that would push it up search engine results. He also wanted to offer more products. Lacking cash, he raised £10,000 in sponsorship from suppliers, and by January 1999 the new site was ready to launch.
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The new design meant Lookfantastic.com was one of the first to pop up when anyone searched the internet for key words such as hair'. That was in part because there was "very little direct competition". Meanwhile, Crown's father's contacts in the salon industry meant that he was able to source a wide range of products.
"At the beginning we were selling to a small market as not many people had the internet." Early customers included sailors on American warships, Middle Eastern royalty and pop stars. As sales crept up, Crown branched out into cosmetics and electrical goods. Demand grew fast and Crown's office began taking up more and more of his parents' house. It was time to move on.
In 2001 he hired an office and warehouse and invested heavily in staff, customer care and logistics. As the internet became more competitive, he also started spending more on internet advertising "as more and more companies entered the market place".
Crown also invested in the site's content to make it "a destination for anyone interested in health and beauty". He paid for articles by top UK magazines and sent out emails to a huge database of clients.
By 2005 Lookfantastic.com was earning £6.3m per year in sales. Crown bought out his father's chain of salons and hairdressing academies, which "meant we were active throughout the industry.
I wanted it to be more than just a website." With sales booming, he snapped up a rival chain of salons in 2008 to bring the total to 13, with training centres for more than 500 apprentice hairdressers. He also developed a new website Lookmantastic.com for the growing male grooming market.
By 2010 the company had "reached a crossroads". A lot of its infrastructure, such as the warehouse and ecommerce systems, needed upgrading. Crown, now 37, decided to sell the firm for £19m to online retail business, Hut Group. Still CEO, he is optimistic about the future. "As part of a bigger group we can expand much more quickly."
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