2005

This year’s Young Guns covers more sectors than ever before, targets more niches, has more women and more nationalities. It oozes innovation, creativity, focus and determination. Not only are this year’s Young Guns succeeding in business, they’re doing it their way.

Heidi Gosman
Age: 33
Company: Heidi Klein
Focus: Female holiday retail
Not being able to buy a bikini, pair of sunglasses and leg wax under the same roof isn’t one of GB man’s main concerns, but for Gosman and co-founder Penny Klein, 32, it represented a rare gap in the female retail sector. Formerly retail analysts, they raised private equity funding and launched luxury one-stop holiday shop Heidi Klein in April 2002. There are now two in London and one in St. Tropez, each generating £1m in sales a year. The New York store will open in spring 2006, but focus is centralised on developing the company’s own brand – already its best-selling label.

Tom Dawes
Age: 29
Company: Aerogistics Group
Focus: Aerospace supply chain management
Dawes expects Aerogistics to turn over £3.6m this year – not bad considering it’s just two years since he borrowed his brother’s student loan to launch the company. Having studied manufacturing engineering and specialising in aerospace at PhD level, as well as developing a supply chain management portal for Airbus, Dawes identified the need for better project management between small parts suppliers and end users. The company now represents, manages and markets a cluster of suppliers to larger manufacturers. Dawes acquired industry-wide approved metal treatment company King and Fowler Ltd in February and has also launched a joint venture with Liverpool University to manufacture supply chain management software. He is now planning for overseas expansion.

Andrew Michael
Age: 24
Company: Fasthosts
Focus: Internet hosting
In 2000 when internet hosting companies were busy chasing big business and building large London data centres, Micheal realised how hard it was to find a host for a small business – so he decided to start one himself. Fasthosts now has 800,000 clients and a turnover of £16m. Michael puts the success down to understanding the needs of new and small businesses and the company’s cash generative policy of requiring customers pay annual hosting fees in advance. With 100% equity and no plan to bring in outside investment, Michael is focused on diversifying Fasthosts into a one-stop communications shop.

James Hibbert
Age: 35
Company: Dress2kill
Focus: Mobile bespoke tailoring
Hibbert never settles for ‘good enough’. Bored in his recruitment job, he quit. Horrified by the lack of enthusiasm shown by a visiting tailor, he launched his own company to do it better. In need of advice he wrote to and got feedback from Richard Branson and Charles Dunstone. The market has taken notice of Dress2kill too. Offering modern bespoke tailoring from £350 through workplaces, online and partnerships, the company has 2,500 customers, 80% repeat business and is on course to double turnover to £1m this year. The company’s first salon will open later this year providing the complete gentleman’s grooming and tailoring service.

Nick Mordin
Age: 25
Company: 24-7 Parking
Focus: Car parking reseller
Mordin is already a serial entrepreneur. He’d started a business at school and sold it by the time he studied banking finance at university. In 2002 he founded 24-7 Parking, taking prime location parking spaces from hotels, supermarkets and private owners, and reselling them to commuters. Accepting online and even mobile bookings, Mordin is taking the model to the rest of the UK and international markets. Turnover this year is £2.5m. Mordin is also busying himself as vice president of private equity firm Oakwood and researching a mobile casino idea. Last year, he sold 250,000 packs of Saddam Hussein playing cards in one month and says he’ll continue to respond to market demand.

Ella Heeks
Age: 27
Company: Abel & Cole
Focus: Organic food home delivery service
When founders decide to bring in management most look to experienced ‘been there, done it’ business leaders. Abel & Cole recruited 22-year-old Heeks fresh out of university. Five years on losses have been replaced by healthy profit and its £500,000 turnover has grown to £14m. Heeks installed professional internal structures, but insists the key has been her refusal to compromise the organic food delivery company’s principles of providing a personal, human and committed service to both its customers and growers. She’s also striven to build a workforce that shares the company’s values, introducing free food bags and a profit share scheme. Achieving UK-wide coverage is the target for 2006.

Alex Michelin
Age: 29
Company: Finchatton
Focus: Luxury property development
Finchatton properties are statements of wealth: if Ferrari made apartments it’d make them like Finchatton does. From bullet-proof glass to wireless networked sound systems, every property incorporates the latest technology and designs. Having worked in mergers and acquisitions for HSBC and a VC fund for startups, Michelin and co-founder Andrew Dunn raised £3m in private equity and started work on his first property in 2002. With developments ranging from £3 to £8m and the banks happy to provide up to 70% finance, turnover will hit £15m this year with profits of 15% to 25% per property. Future plans include overseas developments and a New York-style luxury serviced apartment block in London.

Sheldon Kaye
Age: 35
Company: Eurosimm Ltd
Focus: Trade/consumer IT retail
Countless companies have made quick fortunes only to be caught out by the rapidly changing IT sector during Eurosimm’s nine-year existence. After starting out selling memory solutions to trade, Kaye and co-founder Richard Harris have become adept entrepreneurial chameleons constantly realigning themselves with their customers’ demands and now supply complete IT solutions. Experimentation with the internet led to the discovery of a rampant customer base, swelling turnover which is set to reach £30m this year. Even now, Kaye is eyeing change, poised to rebrand the consumer side into a network of 1,000 sites each operating under the ‘Think4’ banner followed by a brand or product type.

Keith Jordan
Age: 31
Company: Adwalker
Focus: Wearable media/advertising solution
Sometime soon you’ll pass a moving digital advert strapped over someone’s chest in the form of a modern day sandwich board – and Jordan’s Adwalker will be responsible. Having worked in his family business and launched his own web design company, Jordan, along with Simon Crisp, came up with the Adwalker concept in 2002. Three years of R&D and trials have seen the company float on OFEX and then, last month, AIM, where it was valued at £14m and raised £4m to start roll-out in its home country Ireland, the UK, Hong Kong and North America. Marketed as premium price advertising, Jordan is confident of a successful 2006 with campaigns already boosted by the likes of Paramount Pictures and Diageo.

Patrice Barbedette
Age: 33
Company: Jobpartners
Focus: People relationship management software
Having launched a customer relationship management product for a global software company, Barbedette applied his masters degree in European business administration and management to form Jobpartners in 2000. Providing software to help corporate clients better manage their people processes and train and retain staff, Barbedette has quickly established Jobpartners as a European market leader. With headquarters in London, Jobpartners also has offices in France, Germany, Holland and Spain and 60 multinational customers in 45 different countries. Notable clients include Nike, Xerox and Boots and turnover will more than double this year to £5.3m. Barbedette, who has appointed a CEO, now concentrates on sales and marketing and exploring new channels.

Simon Coyle
Age: 30
Company: Kshocolat
Focus: Chocolate gifts and retail
He’s not a chocoholic, but Coyle has tasted success by realising the UK chocolate gift market was rich for modernisation. With two shops in Scotland and a range of premium products finding their way on to shelves of 250 stockists including Waitrose and Liberty, Coyle is looking to bring quality to a market dominated by quantity. Also exporting products to Europe, Japan, Australia and the US, turnover will quadruple to £2m this year. Coyle predicts additional exports and placings, boosted by the company’s first marketing campaigns, will see that figure rise to £6m in 2006.

Emma Barnett
Age: 31
Company: Essential Escapes
Focus: Spa holiday operator
Barnett’s former publishing employers couldn’t have expected to send her exploring the world’s greatest spa hotels and not get a taste for it. That’s what happened and in 2002, along with solicitor sister Deborah, 33, and private equity entrepreneur Jonathan Brod, she started Essential Escapes, the UK’s first dedicated luxury spa operator. Growth has been organic and self-financed, and turnover will break the £1m mark this year, doubling in 2006. With packages averaging £2,500 per person but rising to £15,000, and a database of 3,500 names, Barnett insists the company has plenty of potential left to exploit.

Justin Hamilton-Martin
Age: 33
Company: 8el
Focus: Telecoms
As a salesman in the telecoms sector in the late 1990s, Hamilton-Martin sensed growing dissatisfaction at the inflexibility of large wholesalers. With co-founders John Rees and Martin Gray he launched 8el in 1999 to take on the big boys, predominantly winning corporate contracts by offering flexible payment solutions and better support. While 8el now boasts a £6m turnover, 40 staff and delivers voice and data network services to more than 35,000 users, the principles remain the same. Clients include ADP and MORI, and Hamilton-Martin is focused on providing complete telecom solutions for businesses with between 50 and 2,000 employees. He expects turnover to grow to £8.1m in 2006

James Murray-Wells
Age: 22
Company: glassesdirect.co.uk
Focus: Online eyewear retailer
If you remember one name from this year’s Young Guns, remember this one. Murray-Wells is just 22 but he’s shaking the optical industry to its foundations. Confused at how a pair of glasses – “essentially some wire and two pieces of glass” – could cost £250, Murray-Wells has exposed and broken the big optician’s hold on the market. Using the final instalment of his student loan he started selling glasses over the internet last September and has already sold 22,000 pairs, saving UK consumers £2m. With a first year turnover of £1m, Murray-Wells is focused on getting “very big, very fast” and is in talks for VC investment.

Timothy Maltin
Age: 32
Company: Hardy Amies
Focus: Fashion House
Introduced to the late Sir Hardy Amies by his great aunt who modelled for the prestigious fashion house in the 1940s, former grave maintenance entrepreneur Maltin brokered a deal to buy the then ailing company for a mere £200,000 in 1997. By cutting wastage and modernising its archaic structures, Maltin has stemmed losses of £2m. He reversed it onto OFEX before last month taking it to AIM with a market cap of £5m. He’s also raised £6m for the company through a private equity deal and licensing agreements for non-couture and overseas ranges. Maltin is relaunching the 14 Saville Row store in October with an aggressive media campaign.

Damian Bentley
Age: 32
Company: Snowball
Focus: Direct marketing
Life is good for Bentley. His club, Chelsea, are Premier League champions. Roman Abramovich is a client – albeit on a relatively small scale – and his direct marketing agency has recorded 300% or more growth in the two years since he and two others set it up. The nine-person London business’ luxury brand clients include Alfred Dunhill, Bang & Olufsen, and home fitness specialist Technogym. Turnover already stands at £2.2m and is expected to rise significantly as its scientific data profiling, targeted mail, advertising campaigns and organisation of exclusive events continue to entice top clients to take initially UK work global.Within five years though Bentley, who owns 40% of the business, expects to exit, with its client list sure to draw interest.

James Day
Age: 24
Company: Urban Golf
Focus: Indoor golf simulation facility
Day left school at 18 to join the golf pro-circuit and coach at his local club. Frustrated at being unable to practise at night and in bad weather, Day developed the idea of taking golf indoors. Sourcing simulation machines from the US and funding from several of the bankers he coached, Urban Golf opened in Soho in September 2004 offering virtual play for £40 an hour. Day is preparing to open a second centre before Christmas and also has funding in place for five more over the next 12 months. He projects first year turnover of £1m will grow to £6m in 2006.

Sarah McVittie
Age: 27
Company: RE5ULT
Focus: Text to ask service
Former corporate finance analyst McVittie and co-founder Robert Thomas believe they’ve found a purpose outside of pub quizzes for their text answering service ‘82ASK’. Providing information as detailed as company data and economic forecasts, each answer is verified by a human and then fed into RE5ULT’s constantly expanding ‘human brain’ database. Provisionally launched in Aug 2004, recent second round fundraising means 82ASK can now market itself to natural early adaptors, 18-35 urbanites, in additional to a number of partners. The service costs £1 per text and first year turnover of £500,000 is projected to hit £6m in 2006.

Sharon Richey
Age: 32
Company: LoewyBe
Focus: Experiential marketing
A successful entrepreneur in her native South Africa, Richey has been making rapid progress in the UK since launching LoewyBe in 2003. LoewyBe, which licenses its name from marketing giant Loewy Group, offers experiential marketing solutions to clients such as Pampers, for whom it created an award-winning giant 16.5 metre walk-through caterpillar demonstrating the different stages of a baby’s development. Creating campaigns that educate and inspire, most of LoewyBe’s clients are now blue chip companies. Turnover of £2.8m will grow to £4.2m this year and with plans to expand into Europe, Richey expects a £6m turnover in 2006.

Wesley Cornell
Age: 23
Company: Shopcall
Focus: Telephone enabled e-commerce
Cornell is looking to profit from the significant percentage of shoppers most are ignoring – those that don’t want to buy online. Cornell’s Coventry-based Shopcall delivers the shopping basket functionality of an e-commerce system over the telephone. Its fully automated system offers 24/7 booking lines and Cornell has spent two years developing speech recognition technology that offers a caller experience as close as possible to direct human interaction. Clients are offered free set-up and pay commission of 65p per completed deal. Trading since February, Shopcall is on course for first year turnover of £2m and Cornell projects 100% year-on-year growth.

Chris Philp
Age: 29
Company: Clearstone
Focus: Training of lorry drivers
Inside six years Philp built grocery distribution company Blueheath into a £70m AIM-listed business – now he’s at it again. Having noticed how hard it was at Blueheath to find lorry drivers, Philp set up Clearstone with co-founder Sam Gyimah in 2003 to re-train unemployed or low-income individuals. More than 2,000 drivers will be trained this year and Clearstone now supplies seven of the top 10 logistics companies. Turnover for 2005 is £5m but Philp expects that to double next year and is also looking at a number of small acquisitions to further swell the company’s training offering.

Nick Wood
Age: 27
Company: Fruitboost
Focus: Juice bars
Nick Wood and his brother’s two North West-based smoothie bars have proved so successful in their first year of trading that competitors have been spotted outside trying to steal their secrets. According to Wood it’s a simple recipe of fresh fruit drinks and great customer service modelled on the $1bn US juice bar industry. All drinks are made on-site and staff attend the Fruitboost Juice Academy before being let loose on the shopfloor. Started with Prince’s Trust and SFLG loans, the pair are currently considering their financial options to fund roll-out in 2006, as well as looking to establish industry standard regulations for smoothies and fruit drinks.

Ed Bartlett
Age: 29
Company: IGA Worldwide
Focus: In-game advertising
A video game developer with 12 years’ experience, Bartlett started Bristol-based Hive Partners in 2003, writing brands such as Red Bull into the storylines of major global console games. However, Bartlett spotted problems with the longevity and flexibility of the business model, as brands had to be hard-coded for a game’s entire lifespan. So in March of this year Bartlett negotiated the merger of Hive into the newly-formed IGA Worldgroup, becoming an equal equity co-founder. IGA’s in-game ad serving technology makes it possible to change, update and track ad placements in games across all formats – completely ground-breaking. IGA is currently closing series ‘A’ VC funding and forecasts are for an eight-figure turnover by 2007 and nine figures by 2010.

Tamara Hill-Norton
Age: 34
Company: sweatyBetty
Focus: Female leisure and sportswear
A year of frenzied growth for Hill-Norton’s sweatyBetty has seen it expand from five to 17 stores and double turnover to £9m. Started in 1998 after Hill-Norton, a former buyer for Knickerbox, recognised the lack of specialist sports and leisurewear shops for women, the company grew organically before refinancing early in 2004. The funding included a deal with retail group Whittington but Hill-Norton has retained more than 51% equity and says the company can now launch new stores from cashflow. Three more will open before Christmas and a further six in 2006.

John O’Malia
Age: 35
Company: Trident Gaming
Focus: Gaming
An online gaming veteran, American O’Malia previously co-founded now defunct spreadbetting company, IndexTrade, processing bets covering an underlying value of $160m. In July 2003 he took betting exchange technology and faced it to the US, under the name Betbug, where sports gambling is largely banned. He also recently acquired betting site Gamebookers, which has an annualised run-rate of €5m profits from €180m revenues. And Betbug is on track to handle $181m worth of bets in 2005, generating €11m revenues. O’Malia plans further betting products and will look to go public in 2006.

Ravi Gehlot
Age: 22
Company: OneOffice.com
Focus: Virtual office service
Gehlot’s a fast worker. At 15 he was organising club nights making £3,000 a time. Next he took his events skills to Greek party resort Ayia Napa under the gaze of Channel 4, then returned to put on parties for MTV. At the ripe old age of 20 he launched OneOffice, offering a fully automated virtual office service complete with Mayfair address. It now has 2,000 clients and turns over £100,000 a month. With agreements in place to resell his patented system, turnover will grow to £5m in 2006. Gehlot also plans to publish a book and was recently invited for talks with chancellor Gordon Brown.

Tim Clyde
Age: 32
Company: the minimart
Focus: Advertising agency
Handling multi-million pound accounts for advertising giants Leagas Delaney and M&C Saatchi taught Clyde (above left) and co-founder Ed Chilcott (32) everything they didn’t want their business to be. The minimart uses its network of independent photographers, film editors and artists to build bespoke teams for each campaign. Aiming to offer dynamism to companies stifled by the bureaucracy of large agencies, clients such as Sony Universal and Rubicon haven’t been put off. The minimart produced 14 TV adverts in its first year and turnover will top £1m in 2005. Completely self-financed the pair plan to grow organically by staying small but growing its collective of partners.

Andrew Pearce
Age: 32
Company: Powwownow
Focus: Voice conferencing
Once isn’t enough for Pearce. Having started call centre company Inkfish, which was sold for £12m with him taking a seat on its FTSE 400 board, he’s doing it all again. This time, with co-founder Paul Lees, Pearce is applying the easyJet logic to voice conferencing, offering low-cost calls without bridging fees or registration. With just seven in-house staff, Powwownow is operating in seven European countries, plans to be in the US and Japan next year and expects to see turnover grow from £1.25m to £6m in 2006. Pearce is conscious of not becoming a one-trick pony and plans to diversify the company’s offerings.

Jennifer Irvine
Age: 29
Company: The Pure Package
Focus: Executive meals on wheels
Growing up on a self-sufficient farm, Irvine sold eggs at farmers’ markets. Ironically, she’s cultivated that potential by selling the ultimate convenience food. Pure Package customers have their entire dietary intake chef-produced and delivered to their door. Irvine conceived the idea in New York where workers squeeze every minute from the day and an industry exists helping them to do so. Irvine’s customers include the busy, health conscious, dieters and celebrities including Linford Christie and Ruby Wax. Growth has been funded by requesting payment three months in advance and turnover has reached £500,000 in little over a year. Plans for international franchises are in place for 2006.

Mark Onyett
Age: 33
Company: TDX Group
Focus: Consumer debt broker
TDX Group has made fast ground in the financial services market since launching from Onyett’s kitchen table in 2003. Offering a new approach to consumer debt management, working as an intermediary between creditors, debtors and debt collection agencies, TDX Group applies advanced analytics and integrated market knowledge to ensure better collection rates. Working with three of the top five UK banks and a number of credit card, telecom and insurance companies, Onyett reports first year turnover of £1.1m will grow to £3m this year. A founding member of staff at Capital One, Onyett is in talks with a number of public sector departments