Dolphin Music

Trusted for 10 years

Rob Williams and Jason Tavaria  launched Dolphin Music whilst still at university, and with a lot of hard work they have created and established a very successful business. They are one of the leading providers of musical equipment on the internet and have built up a chain of 3 shops in Liverpool, Gateshead & Huddersfield. What gave you the idea for Dolphin? 
Most of our friends were DJs; we were not, but we enjoyed the music. We discovered a computer program called Rave Ejay which allowed you to create a dance song on your computer very easily, so easy even we could do it!We knew that all our friends who DJ'd would love this and so we started the business focusing on computer music.Our idea was to create an online shop selling such equipment, but to also be more than just a retail service and offer customers the chance to learn about making music by providing tools such as our sound card selector to help them decide.We knew we could get people to the site by working with search engines such as Google and Yahoo. We believed we had a good idea and had nothing to lose by giving it a go.What were you doing at the time you had the idea?
When we set up we were both studying at university. When Rob left university he was working full time and then he would come home and work on the website for the company.What was the first thing you did to try and make the idea happen?
After the first year we had designed the e-commerce site, managed to get the bank to agree to give us a credit card terminal and had even had a few orders. Working from a student house, boxes of equipment would arrive and we would ship them out again via the Post Office and then via our couriers.After university we moved to a bigger house with some friends and carried on working. Within a year we had around £100,000 stock just in the house and turned over £1 million in the year.