WE began following the fortunes of three budding entrepreneurs 18 months ago
as they were about to take the plunge and start their own businesses. Since
then they have been on a rollercoaster ride of incredible highs and some
nail-biting lows. We take a look at how they are getting on.
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. Six months ago the first shop was doing so well that he planned to open
a second by this Christmas. Despite spending his £40,000 loan within six
months of starting up, Demarquette had begun to fund the business entirely
out of cashflow. He had also started supplying several hotels and corporate
clients who give the chocolates to their customers as gifts. And he had
begun monthly tasting events at his shop.
NOW: Demarquette has shelved plans for a second shop after being taken
on by Fortnum & Mason to create a range of 16 bespoke chocolates. The
chocolates, which use Fortnum & Mason ingredients and are branded with
its label, went on sale in September.
Demarquette said: “This catapults us into an arena of serious producers. It is
a dedicated range unique to Fortnum & Mason and the volumes we are
selling are equivalent to a second shop.”
He has now been approached by other stores in Britain, Ireland, America and
Japan to make dedicated ranges. He is producing about 200kg of chocolate a
week and plans to make champagne truffles to sell in his shop for Christmas.
The business is still being funded entirely from cashflow, but Demarquette
will review the situation in the new year because, if production continues
to grow at this pace, he would like to take on more staff.
“My work-life balance is just one word now – work,” said Demarquette. “I dive
into it from four in the morning until eight in the evening, six days a
week. But it is fun work. I feel nervous, happy and very tired but I think
that it was a good gamble. I think I have taken the right decisions.”
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
Bir-mingham, she wrote a business plan and got a start-up loan of £35,000
from NatWest. She found an Italian designer to help her create the
sunglasses and last July 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, because of their high retail price – £29 to £50 – Le found
it harder than she expected to get fashion retailers to stock her
sunglasses. She also had to postpone the launch of her smallest range of
sunglasses – for babies and children up to three years old – because she was
not happy with the design.
NOW: Last month Le launched a new range of sunglasses for two to five
year olds at the Paris trade show and they were very well received.
Following feedback from customers she is also looking at launching a range
of optical glasses for children.
However, she is still struggling to develop sunglasses for babies and very
young children. “It is taking a lot longer than I anticipated,” she said.
“Babies’ faces change constantly so it is proving a bit difficult.”
Since starting up her business 18 months ago Le has had to readjust both her
age and price expectations downwards. Having originally planned to make
sunglasses for children up to 16, she has discovered that the main market is
for under10s, and her new range will retail from £18.
Having suffered a washout summer in this country, she has also learnt that it
is vital never to rely on the British weather. “It was absolutely
horrendous,” she said. “Sales of sunglasses by the big brands were down by
60% compared with last year so as a start-up we did well to survive. It was
a real struggle.”
As a result she now has several distributors overseas, including firms in
Australia, Switzerland and Italy. “We have to find sun-nier climates,” she
said. “People overseas are much more used to wearing sunglasses so you don’t
have to educate them about buying sunglasses for their children.”
To help her take the Zoobug brand international, Le is now looking for an
outside investor such as a venture capitalist or business angel to inject
some money into the business and help with distribution.
“I feel I am turning a corner,” said Le. “It has been hard work and I am
shattered, but I am delighted with the way it is going.”
Rob Taub
Sportsbase.co.uk
THE STORY SO FAR: Former schoolfriends 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 and for local clubs to announce
fixtures.
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.
After struggling to find advertising revenue, in April Taub struck gold,
bringing 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 under their own
branded banner in return for a monthly subscription.
NOW: The Sportsbase website has had more than 4.5m hits since it was
launched 18 months ago and though advertising revenue is still minimal,
operating costs are low and, with investors now on board, Taub said the
business is able to stay afloat “quite comfortably”. After some technical
delays he hopes to launch Sports Impact by the end of the year. He hopes
this will transform the fortunes of the business.
Taub points out that MySpace and Skype have recently joined forces to offer a
similar kind of system to users of the MySpace community website, and said:
“What they are doing shows that we are on the right road and even a step
ahead of them.”
Taub has signed up a couple of local sports clubs to test Sports Impact and
eventually hopes to persuade clubs across Europe to adopt the system, which
will make it easier for team captains to contact players to arrange matches.
Now 24, Taub said he would far rather be doing this than a regular job: “There
was a lot of risk, but it has been great to get involved in this and
hopefully it will be a great success. I am loving it.”
