Julie Diem Le
Zoobug
The story so far: Julie Diem Le, 31, an eye surgeon, left her job with
the NHS to start her own business making and selling sunglasses for
children.
After attending courses run by her local Business Link in Birmingham, she
wrote a business plan and got a start-up loan of £35,000 from NatWest. She
found an Italian designer to help create the sunglasses and in July 2006
launched her first range, aimed at children aged 7 to 16. A few months later
she launched a second range, called Flexibugs, for younger children, aged 3
to 8.
One year after starting her venture, Le was selling more than 2,000 pairs of
Zoobug sunglasses a month in Selfridges and upmarket opticians around the
country. However, she soon realised that her initial price and target age
range were wrong and adjusted both downwards.
The poor British weather last summer also convinced Le to start selling her
products overseas and she was looking for an outside investor to help fund
the move into foreign markets.
Now: Le has put on hold her search for an outside investor because she
managed to get a bank loan of £60,000 to fund the business’s expansion.
Her Zoobug sunglasses are now stocked in 13 countries and she is in the
process of developing a range of optical glasses for children aged 2 to 12
in addition to her sunglasses.
To accommodate the firm’s growth, Le has moved into offices in north London
and taken on two staff. In fact her biggest problem at the moment is
ensuring she has sufficient cash flow to cope with demand. “The business is
profitable on a month-by-month basis but because we are expanding quickly I
really have to keep a tight rein on things to make sure it doesn’t go
crazy,” she said.
She is both delighted and relieved that the business has succeeded in getting
to this point. “It has been worth it, but it has been much harder than
anything else I’ve ever done — including eye surgery,” said Le. “When I
first started I was quite naïve and I didn’t realise how long it would take
to develop a brand. Only this year do I really feel that I have actually got
the product just right and that we are selling into the right channels as
well.”
She has this advice for other people starting a business: “Get good people
round you.”
Marc Demarquette
Demarquette Chocolates
The story so far: Marc Demarquette, 35, was a management consultant in
London but an accident made him rethink his priorities. He decided to turn a
love of chocolate into a business. After learning how to make chocolate at a
culinary school in Paris he obtained a £40,000 bank loan to get started and
within four months had opened a shop, Demarquette, in Fulham, southwest
London.
He also set up a production facility nearby and employed a chocolatier to help
him. He had planned to open a second shop but put his plans on hold after
being taken on by Fortnum & Mason to create a range of bespoke
chocolates. He was also approached by other stores in Britain, Ireland,
America and Japan to make dedicated ranges.
Despite spending his £40,000 loan within six months of starting up,
Demarquette had so far been able to keep funding the business out of cash
flow.
Now: Sales through Fortnum & Mason are going so well that
Demarquette will be launching a new range next month called British Garden.
He has also launched a new range of his own chocolates this month called the
Pure Collection, made using chocolate from a single cocoa estate. In January
he launched his website, Demarquette.com, and online sales are going well.
He said: “It has been non-stop. We had an amazing Easter. Sales were 20% above
what we had forecast.”
He is still in discussions with stores around the world about creating bespoke
ranges but is proceeding cautiously.
He said: “Because the negotiations are long-distance it is taking a long time.
But I would rather do it well or not at all. There is no way I am going to
degrade our brand or our presence in any way.”
Two years after starting, Demarquette is still managing to fund the business
entirely from cash flow, even though it means keeping a tight rein on the
budget.
“Looming over us all the time is the statistic that one in three start-ups is
going to go bust. So I’m absolutely euphoric that we have fought against all
the odds.”
He has this advice for those dreaming of running their own business: “Take the
plunge if you are more than 120% sure that you want to do it. It’s a
rollercoaster ride and there are some huge ups and downs. For me it’s still
seven days a week, waking up at 4am or 5am.
“My life has had to be put on hold and I am not getting the City salary I used
to, but I’m loving it. It’s worth every minute.”
Rob Taub
Sportsbase.co.uk
The story so far: Former school friends Rob Taub and Nick Kenton
started a free online directory listing all the sports clubs in Britain.
They hoped it would make money by attracting advertising.
They had obtained an unsecured bank loan of £12,500 from Barclays and had
combined savings of £12,500 to get the business going. They planned to
employ an agency to sell advertising and last August launched an additional
service on the site, Sportsmate, an online interactive community to enable
people to find players in their area.
One early casualty, however, was Taub and Kenton’s business partnership. Four
months after launch, Kenton withdrew from the firm for personal reasons,
leaving Taub to run the venture alone.
After struggling to find advertising revenue, last year Taub brought in two
partners, Global E-Network, a technology company, and Mediarun, an online ad
agency, which between them pledged to invest £80,000 over two years in
return for a 25% stake each.
He was also on the verge of launching Sports Impact, a service that will
enable sports clubs to offer members free calls and texts in return for a
monthly subscription.
Now: Unfortunately things have not gone according to plan. The launch
of Sports Impact has been delayed by six months until now because of
technical difficulties, leaving Taub and his partners in frustrated limbo.
In addition, visitors to the original Sportsbase site have fallen off. With
virtually no advertising revenue coming in and Taub’s two investor partners
unwilling to commit more money, Taub has had to ask his family to invest
£10,000 — in return for a 5% stake in the business — to pay for revamping
the website.
Taub said: “It has been a bit frustrating. We’ve had a lack of revenue so it
has been hard to market and develop the site. With this £10,000 we’ll be
able to make it a lot more user-friendly and hopefully make it a lot more
sticky so people will come back and use it again.”
He now plans to offer Sports Impact to clubs around the country for a one-off
membership joining fee, with the first few clubs invited to join for free.
All clubs joining the scheme will receive a share of any revenue generated
from calls and advertising.
Taub, 25, remains optimistic that it will all come right eventually, and said:
“I’m still really positive and enthusiastic about the project and I’m
confident I can make something special out of it. The potential is massive.”
However, realistically, said Taub, if the business does not take off in the
next year or so then it will be time to reassess the situation.
“By then Sports Impact will have been up and running for a while and we’ll
have done everything we can do with the website. So if it hasn’t worked by
then and is going as slow as it is now, then I don’t think it will ever take
off.”
You can follow our entrepreneurs’ progress right from the beginning by
going to timesonline.co.uk/entrepreneur
