On 3rd Jan 2022 I turned 40 and had the life I dreamed of, lovely house, 2 beautiful children, decent car, low mortgage payments and a career that I enjoyed, no, loved.

In the unspoken part of this life was a difficult, tempestuous home life I worked very hard to manage and keep calm and undramatic.

On my 40th I had an awkward day given that my wife had asked me to move out temporarily to give her some space to figure out how she felt and what she wanted. We'd had a similar situation a couple of years previously after the birth of our youngest daughter and I hoped it would 'blow over'.

Unfortunately (at the time) that wasn't what was actually going on and over the last several years my calm and undramatic life has been somewhat scripted by a deranged soap opera writer. Police, unfounded allegations and REPEATED attempts to take my gorgeous daughters who mean the world to me, social workers, magistrates and judges. Oh and so far about £100k in legal fees.

I am unashamed of all of this as throughout this entire train wreck I have been the bigger person, always putting my childrens needs first above any other consideration. Including stepping away from the career that regularly took me a hundred miles away to work.

While I was lost and lonely, unable to trust myself, let alone many of my friends (given that almost anything I said seemed to turn up twisted out of context in 'her' legal documents) I found joy in some of the small pleasures of life. I spent time mastering the art of brewing coffee... the real stuff that I was told was too expensive previously. I did crafts and improved my home the best I could on Facebook marketplace freebies and eventually I met the woman of my dreams!

She is an amazing lady, matching me for creative and expressive ideas and matching my political feelings perfectly. She had a small business selling food products from her native Greece and she INSPIRED me to scratch my entrepreneurial itch which had been buried during my survival years.

Now we enjoy this life in as calm and enjoyable a way as possible, given that we both have teenagers in our lives!

I saw the joy in my cup and calm and love on my walls and figured that I'd love nothing more than to share it with the world at large. I started by finding a brilliant Rockstar Roasting company who I've worked with closely to create a fantastic line of coffees which they expertly roast to order for me, delivering as quickly as possible after roasting - they make a difference you can actually taste in your cup! They started me out on a journey that showed me that I can do this, I could deliver excellence if I really wanted too.

To highlight this, in 2024 and 2025 I entered a couple of bags of my favourite coffees into The Great Taste Awards and am honoured and proud to say that 3 seperate coffees have been awarded stars!

Once this was up and brewing I revisited the suppliers I first found in 2017 but abandoned during covid lockdowns when the world seemed like a much harder place.

Some had gone but others, such as the painting by numbers factory had become better, more reliable and had greatly improved the quality of the paints and canvasses.

I then had 2 brands I wanted to build and only so much headspace while also working a day job to try and claw back as much of the debts as possible. So one cold, rainy day in December last year, while eating a sandwich and staring into the winter sky I remembered that I owned a number of video or product themed domain names, parked for several years. Including the one you're reading these words on now!

At that point things seemed to fit together like the pieces of a Custom'd photo jigsaw puzzle... this is how a shopping TV business is organised. 1 destination and multiple product lines.

So now a few friends are working with me behind the screens to bring even more variety. Pet based products and fun collectables are all in the pipelines and who knows what will be next!

The core thing to understand is this: whatever products you see on the pages of ProductPros, the quality and ethicacy are of the highest priority. I'll never put our name to a product to make a few quid - the brand means far more to me than any disposable deals.

I hope to revisit previous brands that I loved, small businesses based across our Great Britain who care about people more than profit and return with them to showcase great value as well.

In the coming weeks TikTok shop and live shows will follow and then we'll be closer to my dream of a modern incarnation of the kind of channels I loved working for previously!