How to build a business when you don’t have a physical product
One of the biggest misconceptions in business is that you need to sell a product to build a strong brand. At WonderDays we don’t own any products and never have. What we sell is an experience, a feeling, the memories it creates, and the stories told afterwards.
We built the business entirely on partnerships. Every experience we sell is delivered by someone else, which means that our brand, our reputation, and our growth depend on things that are not entirely in our control. Scaling this business model comes with its own unique set of challenges.
If you are building any kind of experience brand, be it hospitality, events, activities, memberships – here are a few things I’ve learned along the way, and what I wish someone had told me earlier.
Your product is a promise, so treat every touchpoint as part of it
When you sell a physical product, the customer can hold it in their hands and experience its value. With experiences, things are totally different. You are asking someone to hand over their hard-earned money for something that hasn’t happened yet. This means the customer journey becomes more important than ever. Every touchpoint – how you describe the experience, the confirmation email, the reminder the day before – is part of the process. It’s important not to overlook these as a founder.
Audit your customer journey the way a product brand audits its packaging and point of sale. Where does your brand promise feel strong? Where does it feel vague? Is there a gap between what you have promised and what the customer has experienced? The gap between perception and experience is where you can win and lose customers, and most importantly, repeat business, which is fundamental for scaling.
You can’t invest your inventory, so invest your partnerships instead
At WonderDays, every experience is delivered by a trusted partner of ours, who represents our brand. This means we’re only able to work with companies that are truly the best at what they do. From day one, we made a conscious decision to treat suppliers as partners, not vendors. That means transparency, fair commercial terms and a shared focus on long-term growth. Investing in our partnerships has been one of the biggest drivers of our growth so far.
Treat your supply chain as part of your brand and build a clear framework for how you onboard and monitor partners. At the end of the day, your partners are representing your brand, which means if something goes wrong it directly harms your brand reputation.
Early on, we had moments where partners let us down through cancellations, communication issues, or inconsistent delivery but we learned to improve. We built better onboarding processes, clearer communication frameworks, and stronger relationships with partners as a result. We became more selective about who we work with and more proactive in how we manage those relationships.
Scaling isn’t just about growing fast. It’s about growing well.
Hire for mindset, not just skills
When your product is invisible until the moment it happens, the person answering a customer’s question at 9pm, or chasing a supplier confirmation the morning of a booking, becomes the product. There is no warehouse to fall back on, and no item to reship. You must deliver the entire experience exceptionally from start to finish.
What I have learned is that hiring for mindset is far more important than hiring for skill. Skills can be developed, but attitude and a sense of ownership are much harder to teach. At WonderDays, we’re building a culture around trust, accountability and momentum, so hiring for culture-fit is important to us.
The right mindset in a small team also compounds quickly. One person who owns their area of expertise raises the standard for everyone around them. In a business built on trust and feeling, this matters more than it would in almost any other business model.
Follow where the industry is heading
One of the clearest signals that you are building in the right space is when consumer behaviour is already moving in your direction before you arrive. You don’t need to be the first one. There is still value in being a second or third mover in a market, as long as you do things better than competitors.
When I entered the experience market, the trend was already there. People were moving away from physical gifts and towards something more meaningful, more memorable. That shift has only accelerated. At the same time, expectations around convenience and flexibility were rising fast. Customers wanted choice, simplicity and confidence in what they were buying. They wanted to feel good about the purchase before the experience even happened.
When I looked more closely at the industry, I noticed that it had not caught up. There were genuinely great experiences available across the UK, but the way they were packaged, sold and delivered did not reflect how modern customers actually wanted to buy. It was fragmented, inconsistent and often lacked basic transparency.
That disconnect became the starting point for WonderDays. The opportunity was not just to sell experiences. It was to rethink how the entire model worked.
This is a lesson I would pass on to any founder looking to scale by following a trend: the trend tells you where to go, but it does not tell you whether the market is serving people well once they get there. Often the real opportunity is not in the trend itself but in the gap between what consumers now expect and what the existing players are actually delivering.
If you can identify that gap and close it, you are not just riding a wave. You are building something the market genuinely needs.
Like WonderDays, Experience brands can grow fast, but fast growth on shallow foundations is one of the most dangerous positions to be in.
Invest in a solid customer experience, build valuable partnerships, hire the right people and deliver better than your competitors. If you nail these fundamentals, you’ll undoubtedly be making waves in your industry.
