Under 35
Following on from the 35 businesswomen in Wales under 35 for 2016 last week, here are our pick of the 35 businessmen in Wales under 35 for 2016. We present the men working and excelling in businesses across the country. They come from a variety of busines
from Aberdare, came up with the idea for the Ridd’s Ramps business when his car broke down and several local garages refused to rent him the necessary tools to fix it himself.
With support from Big Ideas Wales, Luke’s business has multiple hydraulic vehicle lifts and an assortment of tools for hire, meaning knowledgeable car enthusiasts can fix or modify their own cars for a fraction of the normal garage cost.
Ed Barnett, managing director Copier Mate and operations director Ignite Cardiff, 30
Ed’s been in business six years as the managing director of Copier Mate and is working on an exciting new route to market – helping businesses avoid data breaches from vulnerable equipment.
But he also helps run Ignite Cardiff, and is one of the team who have successfully grown the event from 70 people in a pub to 450 in the Glee Club, meeting every other month. And they just confirmed a 1,400-strong event in the main auditorium of the Wales Millennium Centre on March 8, 2017 (more details will be released soon). Ignite has shown Ed how important it is to bring communities in Cardiff together and he sees events like this as a force for good in the world.
Sam O’Sullivan, director SOS Athletic Excellence, 29
Sam is one of the founding directors at SOS Athletic Excellence – an independent 5,000 sq ft gym in Cardiff, opened in 2013. In January 2015, he expanded the gym by 2,000 sq ft in an investment worth £18,000.
In February he invested £60,000 in new gym equipment and added a mezzanine floor to the gym, increasing the footprint by a further 1,500 sq ft to run bootcamps, personal training and body composition sessions back-to-back.
This month, he invested £15,000 in opening a cafe – SOS Kitchen – providing healthy meals to members and he’s looking to franchise the business soon.
Liam and Ellis Barrie, co-owners The Marram Grass Cafe, 29 and 27
The Marram Grass Cafe, a “greasy spoon” on a caravan park in Anglesey, made it into the exclusive Good Food Guide.
Opened six years ago, the fourtabled cafe has been extended to a 40-cover restaurant that has gone from serving 30 diners a week to up to 2,000 covers. The brothers now employ 30 members of staff to ease the increasing workload.
Gareth Jones, CEO of Welsh ICE, 32
Gareth Jones experienced the frustrations of getting start-ups moving first-hand in Cardiff. Unable to get the support he needed for his startup from traditional business support schemes, he saw that it was the community of young entrepreneurs who were most forthcoming in offering each other support. This helped develop his view that there was another way to help generate and support entrepreneurship in a much more sustainable manner than at present.
Gareth responded to an advert in the paper looking for a social entrepreneur with a salary of £1. In 2012, along with serial entrepreneurs William Record and Antony Record, Gareth launched the Welsh Innovation Centre for Enterprise, or Welsh ICE as it is known.
ICE is now home to over 100 entrepreneurs across three buildings on the ICE Campus, and was recently recognised in the Senedd as having created over £13.5m value for the Welsh economy, with ambitious plans for growth through 2016-17. Gareth was awarded the Entrepreneurs’ Champion of the Year prize at the Entrepreneurs Wales Awards 2015.
Nathan John, CEO LearnThruMusic, 32
Nathan is a entrepreneur who has been endorsed by a prime minister and the Prince’s Trust, been a role model for the Welsh Government and a UK business delegate in Athens.
In 2008, aged 23, Nathan founded Rewise Learning. Being dyslexic, Nathan struggled to revise for his GCSEs. That’s when he realised he could remember song lyrics, but not his revision notes – and he set about turning his weakness into a business.
Rewise has created four awardwinning educational brands and engaged more than 50,000 people. It