‘What I know, is that you never know. You can never tell which products will fly out the door in their millions and which will be complete losers’, says John Mills. It’s a surprising admission from a man who has built an £80 million a year business selling innovative household products. Mills is the majority shareholder and chairman of JML (John Mills Ltd), a London-based company that generates sales through video promotions. You may have seen their video screens in supermarkets and high street stores such as Boots, Robert Dyas and Wilkinsons.
JML products are ‘demonstration products’ which means that if you simply put them on a shelf in a store they wouldn’t do much, but if you explain and demonstrate how they work they can sell in big numbers. When John Mills started in the business back in 1962, a demonstration meant a live demonstrator. Demonstrators were often out of work actors: talented, temperamental and relatively expensive. Mills’ big breakthrough came in the early 1990s when he came across the idea of using looped video recordings instead. Since then he hasn’t looked back. The company has grown and grown, from an office in the basement of his house to a firm employing 360 people.
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