The Entrepreneur Experiment EE452 - The 5-Year, £60m Fragrance Empire with Connor Martin, The Essence Vault
In this episode of The Entrepreneur Experiment, Gary Fox sits down with Connor Martin, founder of The JAQ Group, home to the viral fragrance brand The Essence Vault, as well as Thomson Carter and Liquid London.
From selling wax melts at a Saturday market to building a £60 million e-commerce empire in just five years, Connor’s story is a masterclass in resourcefulness, experimentation, and resilience.
He reveals how he turned a £16,000 credit card experiment into one of the UK’s most successful fragrance groups, scaled during COVID by pure instinct, and rebuilt after nearly losing everything in a logistics nightmare. Connor also shares how he applies ruthless efficiency, “fail fast” culture, and first-principles thinking to stay ahead in the hyper-competitive DTC world.
If you want the real playbook for bootstrapping, scaling, and surviving e-commerce chaos, this episode is unmissable.
Show Notes
In this episode, we cover:
💡 How a bottle of CK One sparked a lifelong obsession with fragrance
🧪 The £16,000 credit card gamble that launched The Essence Vault
🚀 Turning a weekend market stall into £800k/month during COVID
🧱 Building from zero marketing experience to £60 million in revenue
⚙️ How failing fast and “implementing before finishing the module” became his superpower
📉 The moment a shipping disaster nearly destroyed the business overnight
🧭 Why Connor runs his company without forecasts — and how it works
📈 Lessons from scaling, burning out, and rebuilding stronger
🎯 How The JAQ Group keeps innovation alive across multiple brands
🌙 His next move: launching a sleep optimisation brand built around his own daily struggles
🧠 Mindset gems on speed, decision-making, and compounding effort
“Knowledge is nothing without implementation — and vice versa.” – Connor Martin
Links & Resources
The Essence Vault: theessencevault.co.uk
Thomson Carter: thomsoncarter.com
Liquid London: https://liquid.london/
Book Mentioned: Black Box Thinking by Matthew Syed
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