Drumroll please...
Flying Start competition winner: De Broize Custom Drums BY TEAM STARLING “Playing drums is all I’ve ever wanted to do,” says Samuel de Broize. “But I never thought I’d be a drum builder.” He also never thought he’d be chosen as the winner of our Flying Start competition for Starling business customers. “That was the biggest shock.” We launched the competition alongside our national advertising campaign for our app-based business accounts. Customers sent in an image of their workspace - kitchen table, summer house, garden shed - and told us how they’d spend the £5000 prize money to grow their business. Four judges from the Great British Entrepreneur Awards (GBEA) selected Sam as the winner based on his passion, vision and eagerness to grow his business. “He’s a highly motivated entrepreneur, whose entrepreneurial spirit shines through,” said the GBEA judges. Sam, 29, makes snare drums by hand. He repurposes and recycles wood from a range of sources - furniture, door frames, floorboards to make custom drums. He takes commissions and sells drums through his business De Broize Custom Drums, while also working part-time as a
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Music Technician at the University of Westminster. He’s been using Starling for his business banking since 2018. How did it start? “In 2016 my grandfather died,” he says. “It hit me really hard. We always said that we’d make a drum together but we never got to it.” A few weeks later, Samuel decided to try making one himself. “It became part of the grieving process.” The wood came from a lintel in his parents’ house, adapted when his grandfather came to live with them. He scoured the internet for tutorial videos and set to work using his grandfather’s woodworking tools. “He was a hobbyist woodworker,” Sam explains. “We’d make little bits together but never anything super technical. This was a very ambitious but also very therapeutic task.” He made his second drum from a floorboard. By the seventh drum, people were not only interested in the stories and sounds of his instruments, they wanted to buy them.
