If somebody offers you a job inside an ecommerce business right now, take it without thinking. That is the advice I give to almost everybody who asks me about the UK job market lately, and I want to explain why I believe it so strongly. The short version is that ecommerce is one of the few sectors where the operational skill you build transfers directly into building something of your own.
I have spent more than two decades inside the industry and I can trace almost everything I have built back to roles I took before I was ready to run anything myself. The job is rarely the destination. The job is the apprenticeship that funds the next move.
My Path Before the Agency
The Pay Cut That Made My Career Possible
When I left the first company I was earning around 7,000 a month. The next role paid me 4,000. On paper that looks like a step backwards, and I had every reasonable person in my life pointing it out. The reason I took it anyway was that the second company solved problems differently, and I needed to see those problems from inside before I could build my own answer. That mindset eventually became how I think about ownership of every business outcome today.
That 1.5 years was uncomfortable financially and frequently uncomfortable strategically. But it gave me a second data point. Without two contrasting experiences I would have launched the agency with one playbook and assumed it was universal. Instead I started with a clearer picture of what I would do differently and, just as importantly, what I would deliberately copy.
Why Ecommerce Is the Job Market I Recommend
The UK job market is hard right now. My wife spent three months looking for a new role recently, and she is talented, experienced, and well networked. That experience matched a lot of what I learned in my first three years building a business in the UK from scratch. The path back into employment is slower than it has been in years, and that means the role you take matters more, not less. Salary is one factor. Future optionality is the other.
Ecommerce is unusual because almost every operational skill compounds. If you learn merchandising, you can apply it to any future store you launch. If you learn paid acquisition, that knowledge is portable into your own brand. If you learn warehouse logistics, you understand the unit economics of physical product better than 90 percent of founders. The job teaches you how to build the thing.
Take the Coffee Shop Job
I tell people this even when the role looks small. A job in retail at Zara is not just a job at Zara. It is a front-row seat to how a global fashion brand merchandises, prices, and rotates inventory. That perspective is the seed of a future fashion brand for the right person. The same goes for hospitality, for logistics, for any operational role inside a business that ships product.
The coffee shop job that pays the bills today is the operational education that makes a multi-million-pound franchise possible later. The trick is to take the role with intent. Pay attention to how decisions are made, how margins are managed, how the team is hired. The compound interest of that observation is enormous.
What Ecommerce Brand Owners Are Actually Hiring For
From inside our agency I see the demand side clearly. Almost every successful ecommerce brand we work with is looking for somebody to take operational load off the founder. Not a senior strategist. An operator. Someone who can run the day to day so the founder can think about the next twelve months instead of the next twelve hours.
That role is undervalued by candidates and overvalued by founders. Which means if you can step into it competently, you become irreplaceable quickly. You also learn how an ecommerce business actually runs, which is the exact education you need if you are starting a new ecommerce brand or growing an existing one. The job is the apprenticeship and the apprenticeship is the asset.
The Long Game Pays Out in Both Directions
The first 12 years of my career are the only reason the agency exists. If I had insisted on the highest salary at every step, I would have optimised for the wrong variable and ended up without the perspective the business depends on. That is the trade I am asking job seekers to consider. Take the role that teaches you something. The market will reward you for the knowledge later.
And when you do build something, give somebody else the same opportunity. The reason I am writing this is that someone gave me a chance back in 2003 to learn from the inside. The least I can do is pass that on by helping the next operator find their entry point. That is the loop the industry runs on.
Where to Find Me Next
If you want to talk through what kind of ecommerce role makes sense for where you are in your career, come find me at the next Ecommerce Camp UK. Bring questions. The merchants in the room are usually the ones doing the hiring.