The inspiring business growth stories of LOVESPACE, Snaptrip, LawBite and BigChange
Ahead of revealing this year’s inspiring crop of Future 50 companies, we take a look at the business growth stories of some amazing previous winners.
We have recently announced the launch of this year’s Future 50 campaign to find the most disruptive and innovative businesses in the UK right now. The campaign dates back to 2012, and each year showcases the absolute cream of the crop from British enterprise.
Many previous success stories have gone on to become household names, and achieve great things in respective industries. Here, we cast our eye back on a handful of the Future 50 Alumni to see what inspiring business growth stories can be uncovered.
LOVESPACE
Future 50 class: 2014
The idea: LOVESPACE collects things from your door and stores them in its warehouse. It will return the items whenever you want them, and you can manage your account online.
“Since 2014, LOVESPACE has gone on to achieve high growth. In the last three years, we have grown revenues from £300,000 to £2.4m. We have achieved this by striking significant partnerships with over 30 universities and increasing our services to include e-fulfilment, storage of larger items such as furniture and home removals,” said the company’s CEO, Steve Folwell.
“We have invested in our in-house technology which allows us to plug in courier partners and scale up rapidly which is been vital to our success. For instance, we moved 1,300 boxes in April 2017, and 28,000 in June the same year. We attribute LOVESPACE’s success and growth to the terrific and diverse team we have at all levels of the business.”
Snaptrip.com
Future 50 class: 2016
The idea: Snaptrip.com provides a range of last minute discounted UK holiday rentals to prevent holiday let owners struggling to fill empty weeks in their calendars.
“The most recent development for our startup saw it acquire Last Minute Cottages following a £2.1m investment round,” said Mat Fox, Snaptip.com founder.
“A demonstration of its commitment to the last-minute cottage market, the acquisition includes the websites lastminutecottages.co.uk, big-cottages.com and henpartyvenues.co.uk. The acquisition sees Snaptrip.com working with individual homeowners for the first time.”
LawBite
Future 50 class: 2014
Idea: LawBite is an online legal service providing “simple law for small companies”. It wraps its advice around its online platform delivering the best legal software, technology tools and documents, all delivered with a human touch.
“Since LawBite’s inclusion in Future 50 we’ve led the way in terms of brand experience, using technology to streamline processes but still providing companies with access to real, experienced lawyers, providing up-front, fixed-price rates,” said Lizzie Knight, head of marketing.
“We’ve now helps thousands of UK businesses to both resolve issues and protect themselves. We’ve changed our business model to include unbeatable Pricing Plans and fixed-price products, providing excellent value to businesses. We’ve also rapidly grown our in-house and legal team and overhauled our website with a new look and feel plus new features. We’ve also secured several rounds of funding for us to continue on our mission of democratising the law for SMEs.”
BigChange
Future 50 class: 2017
Idea: BigChange aims to create a more level playing field for smaller businesses with its simple and scalable platform that enables business owners to manage everything from quote to invoice.
“BigChange specialises in simple to use Mobile Workforce Management software that lets companies plan, manage, schedule and track their workforce. The company has scaled rapidly since it featured in the Future 50 in early 2017,” said Martin Port, founder and CEO.
“We are now one of the fastest growing tech businesses in the UK and were 25th out of 50 in the Deloitte Fast 50, 2017 (recognising 1095 per cent growth over the previous four years). BigChange also won Tech City’s flagship programme Northern Stars. Most excitingly, BigChange technology is now used by over 15,000 subscribers and is on track to reach 50,000 by 2020.”
Hopefully, this handful of Future 50’s greatest business growth stories hits gives you some idea of how disruptive those that make the cut really are.
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About the author
Letitia Booty is a special projects journalist for Real Business. She has a BA in english literature from the University of East Anglia, and since graduating she has written for a variety of trade titles. Most recently, she was a reporter at SME magazine.
