February 2018

WARWICKSHIRE MEANS BUSINESS

Grant funding lifts Labyrinth to another realm of business

Leamington Spa-based Labyrinth Logistics has taken its business reach to "another realm" with support from a Warwickshire County Council small capital grant.

Based in Harbury Lane in Leamington Spa, Labyrinth is a small business (with five employees including directors Ruth Waring and Jo Godsmark) punching far above its weight. Its client list includes national and international organisations such as MARS, Lego, Oxfam, the Salvation Army Trading Company and Wilko.

Founded in 2000, Labyrinth began as a specialist transport consultancy, advising big organisations how to get their goods safely, efficiently and economically around the country. Their work has traditionally focused on projects such as running transport tenders and ensuring that hauliers are fully compliant when working on and off the road, using traditional “paper and pen” audits.

But Labyrinth Logistics is growing. The company recently received the Innovation award at both Leamington Business Awards and Coventry and Warwickshire SME awards for their latest development - a unique web-based transport compliance management and audit tool, SilkThread®.

SilkThread® offered the company scope for significant further growth - and that is where the £29,744 county council grant proved invaluable.

"SilkThread® is basically a navigational aid in a very complex environment," said Ruth Waring. "It is named after the silk thread which Ariadne gave Theseus to help find his way out of the labyrinth in Greek mythology. Keeping a major transport operation compliant can be a pretty labyrinthine business so SilkThread® is designed to simplify that operation as much as possible.

"The software has evolved so that it can now be applied to any businesses requiring a compliance solution, not just those which own vehicles. We offer a full range of operational support, from helping gain the necessary operator's licence to mapping out how best to get goods around the country.

"SilkThread® is an exciting development and customer feedback shows it can transform compliance management for their businesses, improving standards and focusing effort and attention where it is most needed.

"We wanted to continue to develop our software to enable us to generate compliance modules for any compliance area, including sub-contractor management, Health & Safety, pharmaceutical compliance, dangerous goods and so on, but needed financial support to get this up and running - and the county council's small capital grant came at just the right time.

"We found out about the grant fund through the Coventry & Warwickshire Local Enterprise Partnership, spoke to Jaymie Thakordas at the Growth Hub and it was clear the grant was just the support we needed to  continue development of SilkThread®.

"It's been brilliant because getting these developments up and running has taken the business into a different realm. It has opened doors for us outside our traditional client base and enabled us to offer a broader range of compliance management services to our existing customers. 

"The grant really helped us take the steps we needed to grow our business."

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