PetShopBowl in Financial Times - My Budget: Entrepreneur Adam Taylor
23rd March 2011
Before Crufts dog show, investment banker turned internet entrepreneur Adam Taylor prepared himself for a “four-day sales marathon” by watching back episodes of The Apprentice.
Mr Taylor runs an online petfood business based in Leamington Spa. A former mergers and acquisitions banker with Lehman Brothers, he was made redundant when the US financial giant collapsed in October 2008.
After an unrewarding spell as a management consultant, Mr Taylor, a Warwick university graduate, decided he wanted to run his own business and moved to Leamington to take advantage of rent-free offices being offered to web start-ups by Advantage West Midlands, the regional development agency.
The business, called Petshopbowl.co.uk, turns over about £300,000 and – a little more than a year after its inception – is making a profit. Start-up costs were funded by savings, help from his family and a loan from the Prince’s Trust.
The weekend at Crufts provided a fantastic opportunity to market the small business to the community of dog lovers and breeders. Mr Taylor was interviewed by Crufts Radio and Dogworld Magazine.
“It was one of the most intense events I’ve ever had to do,” Mr Taylor said.
A family love affair with animals helped him spot a gap in the market. Having grown up with two dogs and five cats, Mr Taylor found inspiration when his mother asked him to go out to buy pet food for her menagerie.
“I thought, ‘That’s enough of the last-minute supermarket dashes, Mum, this is not the way to do it – let’s schedule it’,” he says.
Now, Advantage West Midlands is to close, along with all the regional development agencies nationwide, to be replaced by local enterprise partnerships that will be business-led but will have access to a pool of grants that is about 75 per cent smaller.
Mr Taylor, an avid reader of the biographies of the stars of the Dragons’ Dentelevision show, concedes that if you are committed to starting a business you will not let anything stop you. But the reduction in funds for regional development may make it harder for companies such as Petshopbowl to get off the ground and to create desperately needed private sector jobs.
“A lot of the money funding entrepreneurship has dried up,” he says.
Mr Taylor would like the government to make it easier for him to hire and fire employees, so that he can turn his attention away from navigating employment rules and towards running his business. To increase the level at which small businesses must pay VAT to more than the current level of £75,000 would also help start-ups, he says.
Verdict
“It was quite positive – a lot more dynamic than last year’s Budget. The cut in fuel duty will have a positive effect on our business. There will also be an enterprise zone near us and I’ll be seeing how it might help our business. Doubling the size of entrepreneurs’ relief to £10m is also very encouraging.”