Interviews, insight & analysis on Ecommerce

How we Built it: Rosanna Nibbs, Founder of Piqant

Give us the elevator pitch. Tell us about your brand 

Piqant is an online marketplace that connects independent coffee roasters to coffee lovers. At the moment we have 16 roasters around the UK. Our team hand-pick only ethically sourced coffees from independent roasters in the UK and we have created a AI tool to perfectly match your taste with our selection of roasts.  

We are constantly searching for small ethical independent coffee roasters who can tell us where the coffee has come from and how they suggest we brew it. We make sure that all the coffee on our website is traceable. We know that our roasters either have direct trade with the coffee farms or they source their coffee from reputable brokers who pay their farms fairly.

What inspired you to set up your company

We were planning to open a coffee shop featuring different coffees but then the covid pandemic hit. During this time, we were trying different independent roasters around the UK,  and that’s when the idea of Piqant arose – a place where everyone can find different independent coffee roasters and try coffee from places they wouldn’t have been able to.

What was your biggest challenge in year one?

In this first year, our biggest challenge was to build a community of coffee enthusiasts like ourselves that buys coffee and understands the importance of buying fresh beans.

What would you say has been your biggest marketing success?

I truly believe that every marketing campaign has pros and cons, one of our campaigns was introducing Christmas coffees. We created a strategy that involved creating different posts introducing them to recipes easy to make at home. At the same time, we created an email campaign with some coffee-themed recipes with coffee brew suggestions from our selection. We had a lot of fun.

What has been the biggest mistake you made.

As entrepreneurs, we made a lot of “mistakes” especially when we ended up creating a business we never originally set out to make. Mistakes are not necessarily negative things but, instead are an opportunity to learn, and we have done a lot of that. 

Tell us about your plans for the future

Many people aren’t happy with the coffee they’re regularly drinking, so far, word of mouth has been big for us, users like the ease of use of the app, the quiz matching the coffee, and they tell their friends. We try to dazzle users with a great online experience, customer service, predictable deliveries and great coffee. It’s what is been working so far.

 We’re always looking for new independent coffee roasters with the goal to provide an increasingly optimised matching system.

Piqant is planning new features we are sure people will love. Our plan is to satisfy our customers and bring more new customers on board.

How we Built it

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