Earlier this year we profiled three people who were about to take the plunge
and become entrepreneurs for the first time. We are following their first
two years in business and now, six months into their new ventures, we
examine their progress so far.
Marc Demarquette
Demarquette Chocolates
SIX MONTHS AGO: Marc Demarquette had been a management
consultant at a large firm in London but an accident made him rethink his
priorities. He decided to turn a love of chocolate into a business by
opening a high-quality artisan chocolate shop.
He had attended culinary school in Paris and worked with a master chocolatier
in the Alps. Demarquette had obtained a £40,000 bank loan from Lloyds TSB
after writing a business plan and was in the process of fitting out a
production facility in west London.
He was looking for retail premises in London for his first shop, which he
planned to call Demarquette. He hoped to open in September in time for the
run-up to Christmas. He was also about to start recruiting and training
staff to make the chocolate at his production facility.
Once the first shop was up and running, he planned to look at other ways of
selling his chocolates, perhaps online or by mail order, or through
concessions within stores, or by selling to hotels and restaurants.
NOW: Demarquette, 34, opened his shop in Fulham Road, southwest London,
on schedule in September and the first two months of sales were on target.
The production facility is now fully operational and Demarquette has hired a
chocolatier to help him make between 135lb and 180lb of chocolates a week.
He has also recruited two people to work in the shop, where he puts in a few
hours each day. In October, he took part in Chocolate Week, an event
organised by the Academy of Chocolate at which his products won four awards.
It has, however, been hard work. Demarquette sacked his first design team
after three weeks because they did not understand what he wanted, and he
sacked his first accountant because he did not know how to do accounts
online. The bags he had ordered in June also never showed up.
He currently works from 5am to midnight most days and has lost 27lb since he
started the business.
Demarquette has spent all of his £40,000 start-up capital, but hopes that the
company’s cashflow will improve in the run-up to Christmas. He is holding
talks about new ways of distributing his chocolates and in the next six
months hopes to start supplying good quality restaurants and hotels and to
improve the company’s website.
He said: “I was excited at the beginning, but now I feel nervous because I
have got staff and so the project isn’t just mine. But the last six months
have fuelled my passion even more. It beats sitting behind a desk.”
Rob Taub
Sportsbase.co.uk
SIX MONTHS AGO: Former schoolfriends Rob Taub and Nick
Kenton, both 23, were starting up a free online directory listing all the
sports clubs in Britain. They hoped the directory, which would feature
obscure sports as well as mainstream ones, would produce revenue by
attracting advertising to the site.
They had managed to get an unsecured bank loan of £12,500 from Barclays and
also had combined savings of £12,500 to get the business going. They had
found someone to design the website and had 35,000 pages of information
ready to go live on launch, covering 70 different sports nationwide.
Taub and Kenton planned to employ an agency to sell advertising and in August
hoped to add an additional service. They wanted to break even by the end of
their first year and to start making a profit by the end of 2007.
NOW: The Sportsbase site has received more than 1m
hits since it went live in May and has just launched the additional service
that had been planned for August — Sportsmate, an online interactive
community for sports players which will enable, for example, people to find
tennis partners in their area and for local clubs to announce fixtures. The
free service enables users to create their own profile and outline the
sports they play, where, and to what standard.
Taub said the three-month delay in launching Sportsmate was due to making sure
the company got it right. “Sportsmate is a unique aspect of the site that
will take it into another dimension,” he said. “Given the success of similar
networking sites, we are confident that it will be the MySpace of sport.”
The Sportsbase site has already attracted some advertising and, with the launch of Sportsmate, which has used up the last of the £25,000 start-up
money, Taub is confident that real advertising revenue will start to be
generated. He still hopes to break even in six months.
One casualty, however, has been Taub and Kenton’s business partnership. Two
months ago Kenton withdrew from day-to-day running of the firm for personal
reasons, leaving Taub to run the venture alone.
Taub is upbeat about his new role, however. “Obviously it has been a bit
difficult on my own but I have got a great PR firm with me and a great
advertising team so it is all moving forward,” he said. “Hopefully when we
get bigger I will be able to afford to employ someone to help me out. I am
so confident and happy with how things are going, it is brilliant to be
doing this.”
Julie Diem Le
Zoobug
SIX MONTHS AGO: Julie Diem Le, a 29-year-old eye surgeon, had
left her job with the NHS to start her own business making and selling
sunglasses for children. After attending several courses run by her local
Business Link in Birmingham, she secured a start-up loan of £35,000 from
NatWest with a business plan that she had written herself.
She had also found an Italian designer to create the sunglasses and hoped to
launch them at the Premier Kids trade exhibition in Birmingham in July and
then exhibit them at the Ski and Snowboard Show in London in October.
She planned to launch two ranges — sports and designer — each in several
styles and colours, initially aimed at children aged 7 to 16. She hoped to
persuade big department stores to stock her sunglasses and was in the
process of creating a website at Zoobug.co.uk.
NOW: Le had a great response to the launch of her sunglasses and at the
Premier Kids exhibition was approached by a leading London department store
interested in stocking the range in time for the winter ski season.
She is also in talks with a chain of sports shops about stocking her
sunglasses, which have been chosen as the official eyewear for the British
junior surf team. Le has also launched a range of sunglasses for younger
children aged four to eight. It is called Flexibugs and the glasses are
being made in Hong Kong.
Zoobug sunglasses will also be stocked by Daisy & Tom stores nationwide
from next month. They can also be bought direct from the website.
Le is keeping all her stock in her garage at home and hopes that orders will
start to flow before her start-up capital of £35,000 runs out.
She now plans to launch a national publicity campaign backed by opticians to
get children to wear good quality eyewear and will be exhibiting her glasses
at the optical fair in Birmingham in April. She also plans to launch her
sunglasses in Europe in January.
She said: “The response we have had has been so positive from everybody that
it really gives you a boost.”
