Swift is one of those brands that looks like it’s doing everything right, and after listening to Keiran Hewkin (Founder & CEO), it’s easy to see why.
They’re doing over £30m a year, growing fast, and they’ve just opened their first store in Angel.
This episode isn’t just a success story. It’s a practical look at what happens when you build a brand around a clear customer problem, then keep marketing tied to the business, not the other way around.
A quick look at Swyft
Swyft’s one-line description is refreshingly simple: “Furniture made easy“. Keiran shares they’re around £32m revenue, roughly 70 employees, and the channel mix includes email, social, press and Google ads, with a growing emphasis on offline activity too.
What stands out in their application is the same message that runs through the whole conversation: nothing is working in isolation. Their best results come from an integrated strategy where each channel supports the next and the customer journey stays consistent.
The origin story: “Why wait 8 weeks when it takes 8 hours?”
The Swyft idea came from Keiran’s time working in production planning for a bespoke furniture company. He looked at the real build time of a sofa and couldn’t get past one question: why are customers waiting 8 weeks for something that takes 8 hours to make?
That became the whole business. The “North Star” was simple: if we had to deliver a sofa tomorrow, how would we design it?
Swyft launched in December 2019. When other furniture brands told him nobody wanted fast delivery, he decided to build the brand himself. Then Covid hit, people were at home, and a proposition built around speed and convenience suddenly made even more sense.
Scaling quickly: the hardest part was committing to the curve
Keiran talks honestly about how stressful fast growth can be in a physical good business. You can’t “wait and see” when your lead times are long and your stock decisions have to be made months ahead.
One of the biggest challenges wasn’t marketing, it was backing the demand signals and placing orders that felt outsized compared to the business at the time. That meant risk, but it also meant they could keep selling when demand was high.
Funding-wise, Swyft started bootstrapped and then brought in venture debt to make the working capital cycle more manageable. They also worked with Channel 4 Ventures, turning media investment into Channel 4 ad credits.
The big shift: from Google/Meta t0 true omnichannel
Swyft weren’t always as diversified as they are now. Up until £15-£16m turnover, the growth engine was largely Google and Meta. Over time, the team saw efficiency decline and started leaning harder into the reality that customers don’t buy just because of one platform.
A turning point came early with John Lewis. Swyft got into stores in year one and quickly noticed something important: their website performed better within the radius of a store. That became a practical proof point that offline presence could lift online performance, and it opened the door to thinking more broadly about out-of-home, print and direct mail.
Why Angel, and why it’s working
Keiran explains the store decision in simple terms: customers kept asking where they could see the sofas, Angel was a strong postcode for the brand already, and they found a space that felt on-brand. They turned the store around in six days from getting the keys to opening, and the launch exceeded expectation, including people queuing outside on the first weekend.
They’re already seeing additional benefits beyond the sales too, like lower returns and higher AOV. More stores are very much on the horizon.
The marketing philosophy: stop obsessing over channels
One of the most valuable themes in the episode is how Keiran frames performance. He’s not overly fixated on whether Meta or Google did well in a given week. He looks at marketing through the lens of the business: what’s the overall marketing spend as a percentage of sales, and does it still make sense given unit economics?
He also shares that brand search is a useful indicator of whether everything is working together, especially once you’re running more offline activity that creates less “high intent” traffic. In that context, he’s happy to support brand search with paid coverage, because not all brand searches are equal.
Win the “in-market” window
Swyft knew they couldn’t compete with the biggest furniture brands for permanent, always-on top-of-mind awareness. Instead, they focused on dominating the moment someone enters the buying window, particularly around moving house. Their approach is behaviour-led: reach people when they’re likely to be in-market, then show up consistently across the multiple touch points to build trust.
That’s where the mix of direct mail, swatches, phone calls, email and ads started to work as one system rather than separate channels.
Website wins: video on product pages
Swyft have seen a big uplift by adding video to product pages and improving add-on sales. Keiran pointed out that for a high-ticket purchase, video helps customers feel the quality in a way still images can’t. They rolled it out first on best sellers and then expanded from there.
The bigger takeaway is how they find these improvements: they talk to customers constantly. Their phone lines are open seven days a week, live chat is staffed internally, and customer feedback is shared openly across the team. It’s less “guessing” and more building based on real questions people ask before they buy.
What’s next for Swyft
The next chapter includes more stores, continued category expansion (with hard furniture already growing quickly), and developing newer markets like Ireland and Germany. The plan is to consolidate growth, let those markets mature, then expand further once the foundations are solid.
Takeaways
If there’s a single thread through the whole conversation, it’s this: marketing works best when it’s built around business reality. Swyft are growing because they understand their unit economics, they don’t rely on one channel, and they keep showing up in a joined-up way when customers are most likely to buy.
And underneath it all is the simplest thing: a clear promise. Good design, fast delivery, and zero stress repeated consistently across every touchpoint.
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