Ask Lis Howell, a woman who has devoted her life to television, why she made the leap into the uncharted waters of the internet at the age of almost 50, and you'll get a decisive answer that could warm the cockles of many a disenchanted old TV exec's heart. "It's good for the soul," she says.
She's not sure her family would agree, however. She has worked flat out, spending weekends in the office, to get the website, bowlofcherries.com, up and running on time. The website, a community-focused magazine site for over-35s with something of a celebrity edge, made its debut, as planned, last Tuesday.
The five partners in the company - Ola Steinsrud, David Hurst, Jane McCormick, Alyson Pearce and Howell herself - each stumped up cash to get the venture off the ground, and a private investor, a friend Howell declines to name, managed to ramp up the total launch fund to £500,000.
Howell is chief executive; Hurst, previously publishing director of Financial Times Business, is managing director. McCormick, who has worked as a journalist for the Sun, the Sunday Mirror, the Sunday Express, GMTV and Reuters, is editor-in-chief. Pearce, who has experience in showbusiness, the media and the hospitality industry, is events director. Steinsrud, the founder of TVNorge, Norway's first commercial TV station, will be new media consultant.
Given the option of being backed by Howell's former company Flextech, where she was senior vice-president of Flextech Channels, the five partners didn't think what was on the table was worthwhile, even though it would have had PR value and involved support marketing. They also decided to avoid the complex venture capital route. Instead, with gritty determination, they opted to go it alone.
Will it work? Not even Howell seems 100% certain. She says that the project is safe until Christmas, by which time it needs to have established a good revenue model.
Howell may have a strong record in TV but, as everyone has learned from the past year, the internet is a whole different ball game, and top teams don't necessarily equal automatic success. However, if energy and enthusiasm could guarantee success in the cut-throat world of the internet, bowlofcherries would be an instant success story.
But who's to say it won't be a success? With a strong, experienced management team behind it, a good well-researched niche market to target and no malevolent venture capitalist on its back, it perhaps stands a better chance than many. It has already got off to a springing start, with, according to Howell, almost 100 pre-launch subscriptions taken out. At £100 a pop for a year's members' benefits, that's a nice £10,000 in the bank after its first week.
"The site has hit a nerve already and we're starting off with no debt because we've covered all the start-up costs with our own money. We've done our research and we know there is a market out there for us," says Howell, reeling off some research bowlofcherries commissioned from BMRB in the summer. More than 10.5m people over 35 now use the internet for pleasure; 7% said they would pay a subscription if they thought it gave them something; they constitute the fastest growing sector of the internet; and they know what they want - mainly relevant information and good conversation. To this end, bowlofcherries aims to provide users with information about everything from decorating and gardening to cooking and travel, top-and-tailed with a bit of celebrity opinion. The company is entering a market that has yet to be tapped. While the number of websites for people over 45 or under 25 has spiralled, no one has yet developed a website targeted at both sexes over 35.
Other revenues from advertising and e-commerce will kick in later, but the subscription-based model should give bowlofcherries a good foundation on which to build. Additionally, the site has signed e-commerce and content deals with Tesco, the RAC and Crabtree & Evelyn, the upmarket gift shop.
For their £100, bowlofcherries club members will get a free gift from Crabtree & Evelyn and an organised social calendar, including wine tastings, tennis tournaments and weekly cocktail parties where club members can meet the 50 personalities who write for the site. Members also have access to experts (such as a personal celebrity shopper) and get discounts on some goods.
Club members will even be encouraged to strike up personal email conversations with the stars - a list that includes Toyah Wilcox, Michael Cole, Fern Britton, Edwina Currie and Jilly Johnson - who will be writing for the website.
The rest of the website and all the content are free, but Howell says that the celebrity involvement and the weekly parties are its unique selling point. "It's not about glamour, it's about conversations," she says.
Howell says she's having the time of her life and now sees the TV industry as stale and unwilling to change with the times. She's glad she made the move and likes the new-found sense of control over the whole project - a far cry from the enveloping bureaucracy at her former employers, Flextech, GMTV and BSkyB.
More than anything, and not just because she and her partners have money riding on the success of bowlofcherries.com, she is determined that this new venture is one of the few dot.com start-ups that survive. Could she be trying to prove a point to her former colleagues?
