leadership and entrepreneurs

Young Start-Up Talent South East – This year’s awards

Following lots of hard work, business workshops and presentations, Young Start-up Talent (YST), an entrepreneurial initiative aimed at 16 to 25 years old, was proud to host a virtual Showcase event for the South East’s finest young entrepreneurs 2020. It was announced that Anthony Mellor of White2Label Manufacturing, who specialises in both white label and bespoke product services for sportswear brands, was voted the overall and lucky winner of the 2020 business prize fund of products and services.

Following the announcement, Anthony commented, “I am absolutely thrilled to have won this year, especially as the other finalists were such strong contenders - I wish them all the best for the future. This award is a great achievement and I look forward to working further with the YST team to progress the business further.”

Anthony now plans to continue moving forward with his business, solidifying his relationships and getting to know the business community, allowing him to strengthen White2Label Manufacturing’s offer further.

Ana Christie, CEO of the Sussex Chamber of Commerce, stated; “This has been a tough year for all businesses and particularly for young entrepreneurs just starting out. It has been brilliant to see how the candidates have continued to develop over the last six months during a very difficult and challenging time and good to see how they have taken on board all our advice moving forward.”

A fellow judge, John Redfern, Director of Corporate and Commercial South East

Anthony Mellor

Region - NatWest, also commented; “Anthony is a very worthy winner, all of the finalists were of very high standard. It was tough to pick a winner this year!”

The YST team worked hard to find the very best young entrepreneurs living across the South East region during the year. The successful applicants were then invited to a business workshop before they faced a selection of local business professionals in a 1-2-1 styled speed-networking, where they gained invaluable advice on how to develop both themselves and their business. From there, the candidates were whittled down to just five finalists.

The finalists pitched their refined business plans to a panel of five judges at the offices of Thales UK. On top of this, the finalists had to hold their nerve in front of a film crew, as their pitches were recorded and shown prior to the Showcase event via YouTube. During the showcase, the final five pitched ‘virtually’ live to an audience of business professionals and heads of education via Zoom. After an audience and judges final vote and a tense wait, the announcement of the winner was revealed as Anthony Mellor of White2Label Manufacturing. The business specialises in both white label and bespoke product services for sportswear brands. Utilising extensive supply chain management, the business is able to offer a comprehensive bespoke service for businesses looking to produce custom garments for their brand as well as offering fast turnaround times through a white label tailored service.

The other four finalists who took part in the virtual event and impressed the judges with their professional pitches, included:

Logan Leckie - Topia

Ayush Sanghavi - Veggie Alternatives

Zak Lloyd - DelivrMe

Carmel Kalani - Spice up your Life

Dave Kickham, Deputy VP Industrial Operations, Thales UK, added; “It was great to continue our support for the initiative and to engage with these talented young entrepreneurs.”

The Young Start-up Talent team would like to thank all the judges, sponsors and young entrepreneurs who took part this year and have helped make the YST 2020 initiative to be a brilliant success.

25 years…where has the time gone?

What was the original idea for Premier Energy and why has it lasted? Where to next?

Hi, I’m Jason Raymond, Founder & CEO at Premier Energy, and in 1995 I started a business with a work colleague. After 18 years in the gas industry the formerly nationalised British Gas Company (BGC) decided that the department we were working in was no longer required. We took voluntary redundancy and decided to set up Premier Energy.

We knew that the knowledge and experience we gained with BGC was required and very valuable as other utility industries were being privatised at the time, and a new competitive market was forming. As the first entrant into the market we developed the concept of a specialist Utility Consultancy. Back then, Computer Aided Design (CAD) was not even developed, land lines, faxes and post were the main forms of communication, and PCs were physically large with small storage and capabilities.

With long hours and several business ventures we finally had a breakthrough client who gave us the chance to save them money on their utility installation. We would like to quickly thank Bellway Homes for being a loyal client and still working with us 25 years later…and there lies one of our secrets to success! It is always hard getting the first break but after that, if you do a good job, the client appreciates what you did and recommendations follow.

There are of course many challenges along the way. The biggest was the passing away of my business partner of 9 years after losing his battle with cancer. There was an enormous amount of disruption with staff and of course ownership issues, but fortunately we set up insurance policies and agreements in the early stages of the company to assist with minimising the impact.

Another big challenge was the financial crash in 2008. Business halved overnight and we had to act quickly to keep going. Having grown to a company of 24 staff it was difficult to make so many colleagues redundant, but without taking the necessary action we would have run out of money. Fortunately we survived, cut our cloth to meet income and gradually worked our way out of the recession.

Roll on 12 years to 2020 and we had grown again to 28 staff, but this time we are trying to make no redundancies through the pandemic and continue to trade. Let’s keep fingers crossed, but I know we are in a better place due to Government support (CBIL and JRS) which were not available in 2008.

Of course, not everything is bad news and there are lots of memorable moments. We try and keep a family atmosphere with Christmas and End of Year events, sometimes in swanky venues but other times less formal activities such as bowling

Some of my top tips for business longevity:

1. Set up the company with adequate insurance and protections in place

2.

3. Hard work and perseverance

Keep good KPIs so you can act on them

4.

5.

6. Have a great team around you and treat them well

Look after your clients’ interests and they will look after you

Be flexible in what you do and adapt to change

and pizza. This is of course before COVID-19 restrictions, and I am looking forward to when everything can get back to what it was before.

Successes have also been part of why we do this. I can count many different themes

Jason Raymond

Founder & CEO at Premier Energy

such as the number of colleagues who have stayed with Premier Energy for 10-plus years, to clients who started working with us over 20 years ago and are still using us today! We work with most of the top 20 UK housebuilders and are known by all the utility companies, building relationships at all levels.

Looking to the future I am not getting any younger, so whilst there have been various offers for the company, I wanted to thank my colleagues and give them the opportunities I had. Therefore, I recently sold most of the company back to the Executive Team. It is for them to make the most of the opportunities, although COVID-19 is becoming a baptism of fire.

The next few decades are going to be a major challenge for the utility industry with the net zero carbon targets. There are many opportunities for entrepreneurship in this field, however I do not see policies in place to get anywhere near net zero by 2050, let alone some who are calling for 2030. The recent pledge for 40GW of new wind power will not even dent the requirements of the UK’s revolution in electrifying heating, lighting, cooking, transport etc.