Small in size but making big strides in business
1 Go Hire, Hull
DESCRIBED as tooled up, clued up, fast and friendly, Sally Wray bought a Hull tool hire business five years ago, partly inspired by her daughter’s reaction to a bedtime story, where she felt a princess should have saved herself.
Moving to new premises, she brought the business into the current era, and 2020 has seen significant investment and growth of 18 per cent, despite more than a quarter of Covid impact.
Record monthly turnover was rung up in
July, with significant investment in IT, plant and equipment, including two excavators, a new line for Go Hire.
It has just completed a deal with Caspian
Plant Hire to acquire a Grimsby branch, with further plans for another outlet in East Hull.
2021 will see further new lines in plant and powered access equipment, while further expansion into wider Yorkshire and Lincolnshire becomes “more of a reality than a dream”.
2 Kingston Joinery, Melton
THE commercial specialist has secured large contracts in cities across the UK, having built a reputation for working on multi-million pound developments in the hotel, education, health and accommodation sectors.
Working across 20 to 25 large contracts at any one time, jobs are managed by a 14-strong team led by Craig O’leary, with projects often requiring up to 150 sub-contracted joiners.
Recent highlights have included a £2.4m contract for residential development The Timber Yard in Birmingham; a £1.4m project in Islington Square, London and the £1.8m delivery for the Defence Medical Rehabilitation Centre at Stanford Hall, near Loughborough.
The latter was with Intererve, and at the peak of the pandemic Kingston was tasked to help convert the NEC in Birmingham into a Nightingale Hospital.
Plans are afoot to launch a specialist timber window systems sister business in the coming months.
3 Smashed Crab Software
TAILOR-MADE systems bring benefits beyond management software across many sectors for Smashed Crab clients.
During the pandemic the six-year-old firm added an eighth team member - in the new role of marketing executive - while working from home, as it pushed on with a strategy to grow turnover by 35 per cent.
It saw how many firms were embracing digital transformation to streamline operations and enable easy remote working.
Two new clients opened new markets in quote management software and music production, while a first international contract was also landed via a first tender win.
This complemented work won with returning clients, with the four directors believing the conscious decision to invest through lockdown has paid dividends.
Turnover has just passed the quarter of a million pound mark, and a target of £700,000 by the end of 2023 has now been fixed, with the recruitment process opening up again.