A young couple say they are on track to make their first million - after launching a sweets business from their dining room.<br /><br />Charlie Wells, 23, and Georgia Conlan, 25, founded Sweets and Sour during Covid.<br /><br />They started off slowly but their popularity exploded after posting videos on TikTok - and they turned over £750k from 2021 to 2022.<br /><br />And from 2022 to 2023 they turned over a stunning £895k - and the pair from Egham, Surrey, are forecasting 2024 to be their first million-pound year, they say.<br /><br />They sell imported and exotic items from around the world - with bestsellers including cake mix and bagel seasoning from the US.<br /><br />Charlie said: "We've just turned over £895k and now we're aiming for our first million.<br /><br />“Our best sellers are usually the limited-edition new releases - we sell a lot of Lays, Cheetos, and American cereals as well as energy drinks like American Monster. <br /><br />“We sell American groceries like bagel seasoning, pancake mix, Betty Crocker cake mixes, stove top stuffing mixes – they taste completely different from the products in the UK. <br /><br />“One of my favourite products ever is Starburst swirlers – they're insane. <br /><br />“Georgia’s is the new KitKat lemon crisp – it’s a limited-edition creamy KitKat with a lemon filling. <br /><br />“We’re really proud of ourselves and our team for getting it as far as we’ve got in such a short time.” <br /><br />Georgia and Charlie started their sweets business after Charlie lost his job as a holiday rep during Covid. <br /><br />After considering other options including wax melts, they decided to start selling sweets after spotting a seller offering wholesale sweets cheaply.<br /><br />They started selling the goodies online but initially were only making one sale per week on Facebook. <br /><br />After making the switch to TikTok in March 2021, the couple quickly went viral with their livestreams packing orders. <br /><br />They went from one order per week to 600 orders per month – and when they moved to a bigger space in June, they leapt up to 4000 orders per month. <br /><br />The entrepreneurial couple then opened a shopfront in Egham in October 2022 where they now employ seven staff.<br /><br />The business continued to grow and after a period of going viral in August 2023 they made a whopping £51k in just three days. <br /><br />“We’ve got a website and TikTok shop which led to £750k turnover in our first year and now we’ve got a website, TikTok shop, high street shop and seven staff members who run the business day to day,” said Charlie. <br /><br />“We always have the newest and rarest imported stock which takes up quite a lot of money as it’s not cheap to import. <br /><br />“We’ve been refurbishing the high street shop so the online site will stay as imports, but the shopfront will be traditional sweets. <br /><br />“Three years ago, we thought this was a temporary business and now it’s our full-time job, we want to keep it going and put the money back into the business. <br /><br />“We’ve gone back to front and started on social media, and it’s been our own growth which has led to us being able to rent a shop. <br /><br />“It amazes me every day that social media has allowed us to change our lives.”
