CASE STUDIES
in the middle of the recession. With very few employment opportunities in her area, Emma chose to capitalise on the knowledge and experience of her parents who already owned a work-wear supply business but reshape the business model to fit her own ideal of supplying school uniforms, meeting the bespoke needs of educational establishments in the local area. Her company, Uniform2Go, now manufactures and sells bespoke school uniforms for 250 plus schools in the South Wales area and several schools in Germany. She says: “The best money we’ve ever spent on the business would have to be the branding, getting the logos and flyers we needed to get the word out about us opening.”
Paul and Server Density
grow the business and diversify her own portfolio, requiring a safe pair of hands to hold the fort at Each Peach. As such, Kate believes the best money spent on her business was the agency fee paid to recruit a nursery manager. She says: “The nursery desperately needed an outstanding nursery manager, and then Susanne popped up via an agency, and although the fee was pretty huge for our industry she is the best money I have ever spent. She’s turned out to be worth every penny and then some”.
teamed up with Jacob Colton to expand the business, and the two business owners are now responsible for offices in Elstree in Hertfordshire and Belfast, employing 12 remote staff and offering a 24 hour website maintenance service for Catalyst2’s clients. He says: “The best money I ever spent was kitting out the office for our first full-time member of staff. When you run a small business and especially when it’s starting off you end up doing pretty much everything. So being able to facilitate having that member of staff somewhat transformed my own life as well as helped the business to grow and move onto the next level.”
About Paul and Catalyst2 A budding entrepreneur, Paul Redpath set up his company Catalyst2 at the age of 15 while still at school. In 2004 Paul
www.smeweb.com
Emma and Uniform2Go Emma Rees, from Bridgend in Wales, found herself entering the job market
American Express has worked closely with a number of small businesses to understand the importance of these investments and also help celebrate them. In 2009, when David Mytton was looking for a simple way to get metrics and alerts from his servers but couldn’t find a product to do it, he worked with his school-friend Harry to build their very own product. They created and released a prototype in early 2009 which provided simple server and website monitoring and, following huge demand, launched it as a commercial product in June 2009. He says: “The best money we ever spent is paying for our own infrastructure and IT on a monthly basis".
americanexpress. com/uk/ money wellspent
SME 23
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