Helping mum pays off for Adam
The day in 2011 that Adam Taylor saw his mum struggling to carry some heavy and cumbersome bags of pet-food, the first thing he did, of course, was to help her.
The second thing was - he had an idea.
What if there was an on-line business delivering pet food, medicine and all other accessories direct to the customers' door? To cut out all that hassle and lugging things about.
Adam acted on the idea. With co-founder Alexandra Tamasan, he formed http://www.petshop.co.uk/. And the plan came together very nicely.
Now employing 12 people from its Hatton Rock base deep in the Warwickshire countryside between Leamington Spa and Stratford-upon-Avon , it has reported 100% growth for three successive years. And Adam is emphatic that such sustained growth would not have been possible without a £96,000 Micro Enterprise Grant, accessed via Warwickshire Rural Growth Network.
The grant was accessed from the Rural Development Programme for England, a seven-year programme (2007–2013) funded jointly by the EU, through the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD) and the UK Government.
The grant created eight jobs at PetShopBowl, safeguarded another nine and allowed this brilliant idea to fully take flight.
"The grant revolutionised the business," Adam said. "We had always been a little bit spending-averse, a little bit cautious, but the grant changed that. It gave us the confidence to back our judgment and not be scared to spend.
"It took us out of our comfort zone and moved the business to another level.
"Along with the grant we also got some really good advice which helped us put together an excellent business plan and enabled us to identify and deal with logistics like widening the aisles in our warehouse and purchasing a West Midlands-made fork-lift truck specifically designed for narrow aisles - simple but very important things which make the business that much more efficient."
Find out more about similar grant funding available to small rural business in Warwickshire by clicking here