Tanyel Mustafa
Published November 25, 2025 10:00am
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The company has seen huge financial growth (Picture: Send It Direct)
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If you need a live spider transported, these are the guys that will do it.
James Garbett, 32, from Bristol, is the commercial director at Send It Direct, a same-day courier service he co-founded with brothers James Thomas, 27, and Ben Thomas, 29.
The weirdest thing they’ve ever had to deliver is a live spider – one that was going to David Attenborough for filming, then it was moved somewhere else. James tells Metro that none of the drivers were particularly keen on that job. The company delivers all sorts for the likes of Nuffield Health, Travis Perkins and ITV.
‘I’ve always wanted my own business and I’ve had other side hustles, and they only really work if you commit to it fully,’ James says.
‘This was the first opportunity with Ben – we work incredibly well with each other, very yin and yang – where we had a chunk of possible customers we were confident would come to us. I was confident that with him, we’d be able to get something going.
‘We knew we wouldn’t have much coming in, but we’d make enough to pay the bills then have six months to add more customers.’
James and Ben had previously worked together in the delivery space, with James working as head of sales for Shift, a company that acquired Yodel, and Ben running his own courier company before. They saw a gap in the market for an on demand delivery service and knew they had the experience and skillset to make something work.
James was confident their business would succeed (Picture: Send It Direct)
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Previous Page Next PageBen left his role first and began the business with his brother, then six months later, James made the jump, too.
The trio got a loan, and had to put Ben’s house down as collateral, but James says ‘we were very confident with what we wanted to do.’
Disaster quickly struck. ‘With that money we bought two vans, and in the second month, one of those vans was stolen. You can imagine how difficult it was with insurance.’
In the following months, they also encountered cash-flow problems, late payments, and had one of their drivers lose their license for a year while off-duty.
‘Ben and his brother weren’t paid for the first five months, and he ended up selling his car to make ends meet. It was, pay everyone else first, and us as directors were putting everything back into the company,’ says James.
‘And for me, leaving a high paid head of sales role and dropping to no pay, and then making under half of what I was paid in the first few months – it was a risk.’
James and Ben had worked together before (Picture: Send It Direct)
Within that first year, James became a first-time dad, too. While that was challenging to juggle, he’s glad he had the power to take a month off to be with his son – while his previous office job would have only given two weeks off had he stayed. That, and the fact his son sleeps a lot, helped keep the balance.
‘We’ve grown so quickly, we’re still chasing ourselves and are waiting for a quieter month,’ he says. ‘I go out and I’m in a role where I can chase new customers, and I’ll knock on doors and cold call.’
The company was able to turnover £14,000 in its first month – a testament to Ben and James being able to built a customer base right from the off given their connections and ability to sway companies to choose them – and 13 months later, turned over £130,000 in one month. James believes they’re the fastest growing delivery company in the market right now.
They have eight employees and over 200 clients, from SMEs (small to medium enterprises) to big household names.
‘I do more of what I get to enjoy [since starting this business], which is speaking to people,’ James says.
Same day delivery (Picture: Send It Direct)
‘What I’ve discovered is my competition doesn’t do a lot of cold calling and turning up at businesses. I will actually just turn up unannounced at a business, knock on the door and say hello, and start trying to have a conversation and more often than not they entertain you.’
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It’s been a fruitful way of drumming up revenue. James’ advice is to not be scared of the phone – customers older than Gen Z, which make up the bulk of his clients, want to speak on the phone. If high value, fragile items are being moved, they want to interact with a person rather than an online portal.
Given his experience of side hustling before, James learned a few things about running a business before committing to it full-time. He knew he wanted to have a people-first approach with Send It Direct and to bridge delivery with technology, without investment.
James’ advice to other people keen on starting a business is to be quietly confident about the business proposition.
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‘There has to be some level of calculation. You’ve got to have conversations, have some form of data to show this could work, build yourself a runway so you’ve got some savings to cover the direct debits. There’s got to be research put into it, and you’ve got to put everything into it.’
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