Want to know what the future face of British enterprise looks like? Then look no further. From luxury lingerie retailers to frozen fish and skip hire, these are the people who are shaping business in the UK.
The group of entrepreneurs aged 35 or under you'll shortly be reading about were hand-picked by Growing Business following detailed research among VCs, angel funding networks, accountants and other well-placed contacts who know who is making it big. Aside from age, we looked at turnover, staff numbers, funds raised and projected growth in order to arrive at our class for 2003.
Peter Marson
Age: 32
Company: 4C Associates
Focus: Software outsourcing and consultancy
Former management consultant Marson and colleague Ed Ainsworth quit their jobs in 2000 to set up software outsourcing and consultancy firm, 4C Associates, with £900,000 of theirs and private individuals' money. Still a fledgling business and 16 person set-up, it has secured FTSE 100 clients including AstraZeneca, Boots and Prudential and is set to make £2m to the end of 2003, with £4m projected for 2004.
Michael Smith
Age: 28
Company: Firebox.com
Focus: Web gadget shop
Web gadget shop Firebox.com launched in 2000 after raising £75,000 at the height of the dotcom boom. Three years on the 20-person company will turn over £8m this year and is profitable. Now Smith and co-founder Tom Boardman are bringing in new senior managers to allow them to concentrate on long-term strategy, launching a catalogue, opening their first outlet and hitting the US and Australian markets.
Nasa Khan
Age: 30
Company: The Accessory People
Focus: Mobile phone accessories
Khan was prominent in the Sunday Times Rich List this year with a worth of £45m. But that's just the tip of the iceberg for the man who started £450m turnover business, The Accessory People, in 1995 with £2,000 from friends. The mobile phone accessory magnate and son of a Surrey bus driver employs just 75 in Chessington, has clocked up entrepreneur awards and support charities and his local football team.
Yasmin Halai
Age: 31
Company: Ideal Solutions Systems
Focus: Print cartridges
Halai spent seven years as a saleswomen before teaming up with brother Shabbir to launch Ideal Solutions Systems four years ago. The 42-person company supplies high quality, longer-lasting printer cartridges to businesses who require superior print finishes, such as insurance firms, solicitors, the travel industry and estate agents. Despite competing with Hewlett Packard it expects to generate £3m this year and £6m in 2004.
Mark Mills
Age: 33
Company: Cardpoint
Focus: ATM machines
By the time you read this it will almost certainly be out of date. Mills moves at a frightening pace. This time last year his company, ATM machine operator Cardpoint, had just listed on AIM and had 300 machines. Since then it has bought two competitors, one a subsidiary of Securicor, for £9.2m, taking Cardpoints ATM estate to 2,068. The share prices continues to buck the trend and turnover is likely to almost quadruple to £25m by September 2004.
Serena Rees
Age: 34
Company: Agent Provocateur
Focus: Lingerie
Rees and co-founder Joseph Corre held up two fingers to British prudishness set up shop in 1994 with the launch of high-class lingerie outfit Agent Provocateur. Now a cult brand it has six stores, three in the UK and three in the UK and four more planned this year.
Damian Cox
Age: 28
Company: EK Straas
Focus: Outdoor advertising
Childhood friends Cox and Ben Goor, 30, set up giant outdoor advertising operation EK Straas last year. By September this year it will have banked £1.6m and expects to follow that with £3.5m next year. The small London-based team of six has proved size is no impediment to competing with big names. However Goor and Cox are already turning down big money offers to buy the business from larger competitors.
Thea Callan
Age: 27
Company: Nails Inc
Focus: Beauty
Former Tatler fashion editor Callan made her parents pay her to take her GCSE exams seriously and quit her job in a hairdressers. It didn't take her too long to get back in the salons and the company she launched in 1999, Nails Inc, now has around 30 stores with the likes of Kylie Minogue as customers, and turned over around £3.5m last year.
Scott Lloyd
Age: 28
Company: Next Generation Group
Focus: Fitness clubs
It hardly seems fair to mention his father David's footsteps in the leisure industry. Scott has single-handedly raised £66m in private equity and £80m in debt for his new fitness clubs. His father is involved as chairman of the Next Generation Group but he does things his own way. Formed in 1997 it will have around 20 clubs open by 2005 in the UK and Australia. Employing 870 it is due to turnover £29m this year.
Jack Glendinning
Age: 32
Company: Its Tiles
Focus: Tiling
Glendinning was managing farms and forestry estates when in 1994 he saw some electrically heated tiles in South Africa. Instead of starting alone he joined Mike Curry, who was then running tile company Warmup. After a stuttering start and a long period of R&D Its tiles are now sold in Topps Tiles, Tiles-R-Us, independent tile shops, and a variation is available in Focus Wickes and other 'sheds'. Turnover is now at £3.5m and next up are the US, Portugal and Spain.
Shelim Hussein
Age: 30
Company: Eurofoods
Focus: Frozen food
Shelim Hussein has been quietly making a name for himself as one of the most talented entrepreneurs in the UK ever since he sold his first box of frozen prawns in January 1993 and started up Newport-based Eurofoods. Ten years on the company turns over £37m, has offices in the US and UK, employing 300 people. Not bad for his first job after his A-levels.
Richard Reed
Age: 30
Company: Innocent Drinks
Focus: Fruit-based drinks
Innocent Drinks’ voracious appetite for publicity shows no sign of abating. But while it may be a master of PR, the attention is justified for the company started by Cambridge University mates Richard Reed, Adam Balon and Jon Wright. It has overtaken P&J Smoothies as the numero uno provider of fruit smoothies in the UK with turnover rising from £400,000 in 1999 to almost £11m expected this year and £18m forecast for 2004. Expansion to Scandinavia and Benelux, healthy snacks, freezer foods and baby food products are planned.
Nina Hampson
Age: 30
Company: Myla
Focus: Lingerie and sex toys
Described as ‘Prada with a hard-on’, upmarket lingerie and sex toys outfit Myla has a cult customer base including the likes of Victoria Beckham, ‘Sex in the City’ and Kate Moss. The venture came about in 2001 when former management consultant Hampson and ex-corporate finance analyst Charlotte Semler, 33, met on a three month Tesco brand strategy project. They hit it off and at the supermarket’s Christmas party decided to start a business. After raising £1.5m from a venture capital trust. The company now sells in the classiest of establishments in London, Milan, New York and Paris as well as on the web and via mail order with £2m in turnover.
Tony Rafferty
Age: 35
Company: Printing.com
Focus: Printing
Organising club nights at university and producing flyers for them contributed to Rafferty failing his degree, but ultimately led to him forming OFEX-listed Printing.com in 1992. The 110 person Manchester printing and franchise company is now planning a move to AIM in the next six months and has just announced a turnover of more than £8m, with profits of £450,000. It is expected to hit the magic £10m next year, and will have 175 outlets by 2005.
Richard Cobbold
Age: 34
Company: Digital View
Focus: Electronics
A fortuitous meeting on a flight to Hong Kong in 1991 led to Cobbold starting £15m turnover business Digital View. Thanks to his uncle, a director at Cathay, he was upgraded to first class, where he quaffed Champagne with James Henry – the man behind flat screen monitor manufacturer Sygnos Technologies. He joined and in 1995 suggested selling the enabling electronics. Digital View was born. Cobbold received £100,000 from a loan guarantee scheme and now supplies the likes of Heathrow Express, Camelot, Boeing with flat screen display units, with offices in London, the US and Asia.
Martin Jones
Age: 31
Company: Freedom Direct
Focus: Travel agency
Jones only worked for his parents’ travel business because a job at the local DSS fell through at the last minute. He oversaw its sale to a Bank of Scotland-headed consortium three years later after he’d worked his way up from an admin clerk on £6,000 a year. Unfortunately for him he was not a beneficiary and with no income he threw caution to the wind and decided to start his own independent leisure travel agency in his home city, Newcastle. He convinced the bank to give him a £100,000 loan by saying he’d generate £40m in five years. Six years later Freedom Direct has a turnover of £42m and 165 staff.
James Keay
Age: 31
Company: Select-a-skip
Focus: Waste management
Keay’s former employer at a skip hire company pooh-poohed his suggestion the company should go nationwide, so seven years ago he decided to start from scratch. To make ends meet he worked evening shifts at Little Chef for £3 an hour. Now Shrewsbury-based Select-a-skip turns over around £10m a year and the man who ran a mobile tuck shop at school and never borrowed a penny is in charge of 19 people and a UK network of skips.
Mayank Patel
Age: 35
Company: Currencies Direct
Focus: Finance
Patel and a now-departed partner launched Currencies Direct in 1996 with £9,000 pooled together to sign a lease on a tiny office in Paddington. Last year it turned over £400m. Simple mathematics show that the near 50 person company, which provides finance by phone for major transactions overseas, such as properties, business and migration is one of the UK’s fastest growing companies. And Patel has already wrapped up the BT entrepreneur of the year award.
David Kilpatrick
Age: 34
Company: Edenbrook
Focus: IT consultancy
In 1997 Kilpatrick and two colleagues, quit their jobs at Oracle to start an independent IT consultancy called Fulcrum. Within two years it had 175 staff, US offices and was sold in 2000 to Whittman-Hart. It wasn’t long before the trio left to set up another IT consultancy, Edenbrook, with £1m from Elderstreet, which in two years has reached a turnover of almost £8m with a workforce of more than 60.
Nick Rutter
Age: 31
Company: Sprue Aegis
Focus: Smoke alarms
University mates Rutter and Sam Tate, 34, got talking about business ideas in Spring 1998. By the end of the year Sprue Aegis had been born with a £50,000 grant. The pair decided to design and manufacture a smoke alarm that removed the three key failures of the current models: that consumers did not change batteries, they removed batteries after false alarms or many failed to fit after buying. Theirs fit into light fittings, uses the main power source and re-sets at the flick of the light switch. The Coventry-based OFEX-listed company, which has raised £1.5m in total will make £6m this year and has a clutch of other products in the offing.
Charlie Osmond
Age: 26
Company: FreshMinds
Focus: Research
Osmond and Caroline Plumb set up London-based student research company FreshMinds in 2000, and are quickly becoming the faces of young entrepreneurial Britain. They made £750,000 last year and are set to bring in around £1.5m this year. The company employs 15 and has a regular pool of 50 PHD and MA students carrying out research on behalf of FTSE 100 clients, including Unilever, Diageo and HSBC.
Stephen Hall
Age: 34
Company: Gamestation
Focus: Video and computer games
It took a £3,000 Prince’s Trust loan to get video and computer games retailer Gamestation up and running back in 1993. But in less than 10 years founders Stephen Hall and Julian Gladwin turned the company into a 450 strong team, with 74 stores around the UK and a turnover of £35m to April 2002. As it is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Blockbuster, since October 2002, further figures are no longer available, but Hall is a name for the future.
Emily Bliss
Age: 35
Company: The Brave Film Company
Focus: Advertising
Established in 1995 with a £60,000 loan by Bliss and Michelle Stapleton, 36, The Brave Film Company has made its name as one of the top commercials production companies. Mercedes Benz, Ford, Peugeot, Cadbury’s, Mars, Hugo Boss, Royal Mail, Budweiser, Egg, the National Lottery and P&O Ferries have all seen the benefit of using the company’s stable of directors. And the 15 person business’s turnover hit £8m last year.
Robin Powell
Age: 34
Company: Moslon Holdings
Focus: Construction equipment
Founded in 1996 by Powell and Jonathan Wilson, Bristol-based Molson Holdings hires out construction equipment for some of the biggest construction names as well as smaller individual needs. In 2000 it was one of the country’s fastest growing firms when it turned over £15m. It now employs 58 with a turnover of £36m and expects revenues of £45m next year.
Michael Ross
Age: 34
Company: Figleaves.com
Focus: Lingerie
Chief executive Ross joined online lingerie retailer Figleaves.com in 1999 after five years at McKinsey. The 94
person company formerly known as Easyshop raised £4m and is now realising its potential under his stewardship, making £7.2m last year, with 100% growth predicted for this year. It claims to offer more underwear brands than retail giants such as Selfridges and still expects success abroad.
Chirag Shah
Age: 32
Company: Trading Partners
Focus: Supply chain management
The words ‘supply chain management’ are enough for some people to suffer a bout of narcolepsy. Not Chirag Shah. He’s made Trading Partners a £7m business in less than three years. The rapid pace of growth has taken the 30 person company, which provides web based tools and supply chain optimisation consultancy for its blue-chip clients, from its London base to offices in the US, Europe and Asia.
Lars Becker
Age: 29
Company: Flytxt
Focus: Wireless marketing
Becker, Pamir Gelenbe and Carsten Boers teamed up to form wireless marketing agency Flytxt in 2000 with investment from IVC and Mars Capital. The 35 person company raised E2m and was profitable last year with revenues of £4m from the wireless acquisition and retention programmes it has run for 180 blue-chip clients. Next year it expects to nearly double its turnover and Becker, who started out at Morgan Stanley Capital Partners in London, has been voted into the top 50 most influential people in New Media two years running.
Lynn Cosgrave
Age: 33
Company: TrusttheDJ
Focus: Talent management
Raver turned entrepreneur Lynn Cosgrave has built a business out of her passion for dance music. Following stint at the Ministry of Sound where she started the company’s record label, she struck out on her own with TrusttheDJ a talent management agency in 2000. Two years on the has raised £2m in venture capital last year, boasts super-DJ’s Carl Cox and Jon Digweed on its books and is one of the leading global names in its market.
Toby Ash
Age: 34
Company: New Heights
Focus: Furniture
Frustrated at the predominance of flat-pack furniture on the high street when kitting out his pad, Toby Ash and co-founder Gareth Williams started up New Heights in 1999 with the help of £750,000 from private investors in order to sell quality wooden furniture on the high street. Since then the duo who met at Oxford have gone from strength to strength opening 8 stores in the UK and projected turnover of £10m for the current year.
Daniel Mitchell
Age: 33
Company: The Source
Focus: Insurance
Few entrepreneurs are fortunate enough to operate in a market which can virtually guarantee year-on-year growth but Daniel Mitchell struck lucky when he started The Source, a company which validates insurance claims for loss or damage to computer equipment. Ten years on from start-up, the company did £16m in turnover last year and is on target for £20m this year cashing in on the boom in PC ownership.
Ben Hardyment
Age: 32
Company: weblix.co.uk
Focus: DVD rentals
Frustrated at the lack of choice imagination at his local Blockbusters, former film director Ben Hardyment decided to use his knowledge of the sector to start a specialist rental service which offers genuine choice in DVD rental. Now, barely a year old, his online borrowing service webflix.co.uk is growing a cult customer base and is on target to hit £1m turnover, all with a staff of four. After raising £150,000 to start the business he is now looking for funding to build on its success.
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