Built by parents,
for young entrepreneurs.

Growing up, the founder of Fledge didn't wait for pocket money to appear on a Saturday morning. He and his friends went out and made it. They knocked on doors offering car washes. They hand-made greeting cards and sold them to neighbours. Come November, they were in the kitchen making Christmas crackers to sell before the school term ended.

It wasn't about the money. Not really. It was about the feeling. The pride of handing something over that you had made. The thrill of a customer saying yes. The confidence that quietly built with every successful sale, every repeat knock on a door, every satisfied neighbour.

"That first £5 you earn yourself hits completely differently to any pocket money you've ever received. You built something, you sold it, and now it's yours."

That kind of entrepreneurial spirit: resourceful, scrappy, proud. It shaped the way he approached the world. And when he became a parent, he wanted the same for his own children.

The entrepreneurial gene didn't skip a generation. When his son Luke was just six years old, he teamed up with his sister Ella and two cousins and set up a stand selling loom band bracelets. There was no hesitation, no stage fright. He stood at the front and bellowed at passing grown-ups with absolute conviction:

"Loom bands for saaaale!"

That took courage. Real courage. The kind that most adults would struggle to muster. And it worked, because when a child puts themselves out there with genuine enthusiasm, people can't help but say yes.

Years on, that same determined spirit is still there. Luke is at school-leaver age now, with his sights set on running his own plumbing business. The boy who once shouted across a garden for custom is the same young man who already knows that hard work, showing up, and building something of your own is the only way to do it.

When his daughter Ella reached her teens, she had that same spark. She wanted to build something, sell something, make her own mark. So he encouraged her, just like his parents had encouraged him.

She launched not one business, but two. One selling handcrafted jewellery. The other a curated mystery gift box: a little box of delight you wouldn't know what was inside until it arrived. Both were genuinely good ideas. Both had real customers.

But she was selling on big, established platforms. And what should have been an exciting first taste of business quickly became frustrating.

"She was essentially left to figure it out alone, on platforms built for grown-up professionals, not a teenager selling handmade gifts to people who loved her."

The fees were complicated and felt endless: listing fees, transaction fees, payment processing fees, promoted listing fees. After every sale, a chunk disappeared before it ever reached her. The interfaces were confusing. The support wasn't designed for someone her age. And the worst part? It started to feel like she was working hard so the platform could profit, not her.

The confidence that should have been growing? It wobbled.

He looked around and realised: the world Ella was growing up in was genuinely different. Kids weren't knocking on doors any more. They were online.. The reach was enormous. But the tools available to them were either built for adults, loaded with complexity, or quietly designed to extract as much as possible from every sale.

And yet, the desire to support young people hadn't changed at all. Every auntie, uncle, family friend, parent, and grandparent he knew would happily buy from a child in their circle if it were easy to do so. People want to be a customer who means something. They want to support someone they love building something real.

"The demand is there. The enthusiasm is there. What was missing was a platform simple enough for a 12-year-old to use, and honest enough that every penny she earned actually landed in her pocket."

Fledge was built with one clear mission: give young people aged 10–16 a real, working online shop, with none of the nonsense.

No commission taken from sales. Ever. A single, low fixed monthly fee so you always know exactly what you're paying. A parent or guardian linked to every account, keeping things safe and giving families peace of mind. And an interface so straightforward that a young person can set up their shop, add their products, and share their link, all in under ten minutes.

Because the people most likely to buy from a 13-year-old entrepreneur aren't strangers. They're family. They're friends. They're people who want to say yes. Fledge just makes it easy for everyone.

"The satisfaction of earning your own money, making something people want, and watching your confidence grow. That feeling is timeless. Fledge is just the modern version of a bucket and some soapy water."

Every young person who builds a shop on Fledge is following in a long tradition of kids who decided not to wait. Who made something, put themselves out there, and discovered, often to their own surprise, exactly what they were capable of.

That's the whole point.