24 entrepreneurs Our entrepreneurs in the spotlight
This year, The Business Magazine has introduced a new monthly feature, Entrepreneurs, where writer Eleanor Harris poses a series of questions for a double-page profile, illustrated with pictures by Angus Thomas. Feedback from our readers suggests these are some of our best-read articles. Over the next three pages, we highlight the entrepreneurs we have covered in the series. For the full profiles, go to
www.businessmag.co.uk
Tom Dudderidge: pumping up the volume
Gary Frank: the rise and rise of The Fabulous Bakin’ Boys
Stroll down the cake aisle of the supermarket and you’re sure to spot a local success story. Cake sales are flat; indeed, year on year there has been a small decline by volume, but family-run cake brand The Fabulous Bakin’ Boys, based in Witney, Oxfordshire, is bucking the trend, with sales up nearly 15% year on year. The company has achieved rapid growth and now plans to double the size of its business by 2015.
The Fabulous Bakin’ Boys was launched 14 years ago by CEO and founder Gary Frank, but its story began much earlier, when Frank, who was working as a Wall Street trader, lost everything in the stock market crash of 1987. Moving back to the UK and finding himself “unemployed and unemployable” for a year, he had a dream in which he was told to “Go and make doughnuts”.
By all accounts, Tom Dudderidge has it all: he has built up the UK’s leading Apple audio and accessories brand, GEAR4, which sells products in 60 countries, has a turnover of £30 million and an impressive growth rate of more than 50% per year, as well as building a family of four daughters and continuing a family tradition of entrepreneurialism. It’s quite a success story for someone who is only 35. Yet, according to the ambitious entrepreneur, this is just the start, as the company focuses on becoming the global leader in accessories in a ‘post-PC’ era.
Dudderidge was born in London in 1977 and left school at 16 to work at Apple mail-order startup Computer Warehouse. He then worked in sales and marketing for mobile technology startups including UCP Morgan and XIAM. In 2004, at just 26, he founded Disruptive, and in 2006 launched the GEAR4 brand of which he is chief executive. The company now employs 76 members of staff across offices in High Wycombe, Hong Kong and Seattle, and was a national finalist in the HSBC Startup Stars Awards in 2005 and won an Edison Award and a Red Dot Award in 2012 for its Renew SleepClock product. Dudderidge was also a winner in the Ernst & Young London and South Entrepreneur of the Year 2012 awards.
www.businessmag.co.uk
In 1989 he founded Delicious Doughnuts on funds supplied by friends, family and the bank. In the first year he made a £15,000 loss on a turnover of £45,000. But the company moved into muffins, flapjacks and cakes, dropped the doughnuts, and by 1996 was turning over £4 million. Following a rebranding, The Fabulous Bakin’ Boys was launched in October 1997, and since then, the company has experienced rapid growth.
Lisa Hammond: wired for success
In the male-dominated tech sector, Lisa Hammond is a rare breed: a female CEO and co-founder of a software company, Centrix Software. A techie who started life fixing telex machines, she is not only running the company, but under her guidance Centrix is growing at break-neck speed, expanding across Europe, into the US and further afield. Centrix Software, a leading provider of workspace computing solutions, is headquartered in Newbury, Berkshire.
Hammond was born and grew up on the Berkshire-Hampshire borders, studied physics and electronic engineering at Reading University and received her business education from the Harvard Business School, US.
Hammond and her business partner, Jon Fuller, founded Centrix in 1997 as a consultancy practice, and in 2008 launched Centrix Software as a separate business.
In 2011 the company more than doubled its revenue and opened a US corporate headquarters in Boston. It currently has 70 employees and more than 500 customers for its software product range, Centrix WorkSpace. Last year it was named a Red Herring Top 100 Global company in recognition of its innovations and technologies.
THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – THAMES VALLEY – NOVEMBER 2012
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56