Success stories
George Moss and John Booth
You’re taking total responsibility for everything and you have to cover the full spectrum of the business.
Sportsglobal (UK) Ltd is a company based at the Business Development Centre on Eanam Wharf, whose online trade directory, Footballtradedirectory.com, is firmly established as the ‘Yell.com’ for the football industry.
Two grants from Finance4Growth have allowed Sportsglobal (UK) Ltd to establish themselves as the number one company putting businesses in front of football clubs and vice versa, providing clubs from the highest echelons of the Premier League down to grass roots level with a one-stop resource for services. They have also managed to create several full-time jobs in the process.
Over 28,000 clubs and 1,200 businesses, including Wembley Stadium, The Co-operative Bank, Vandanel, Pukka-Pies and Joma, are currently registered on its database.
Owners George Moss, 56, from Hoddlesden and John Booth, 53, from Leyland, have both had a long and varied career in football including high level positions at both Preston North End FC and Stoke City FC.
Why did you want to start your own business?
John: “The idea for a directory came about when I was commercial director at Stoke City FC. I was looking for a new kit supplier for the club and couldn’t find a single source of information that collated together maybe 40 or 50 suppliers anywhere. That gave us the seed for the idea and we saw the internet as a logical way of helping clubs and businesses in football so decided to go that route.”
What was the deciding factor for you?
John: “We looked at the football arena and identified niche markets in two areas. The first of those was the lack of commercial expertise below the Premier League and the second was to see that grass roots football was growing at a phenomenal rate and there was no one point of contact that you could drive your business through.”
How did you get the business off the ground?
George: “We did a lot of research; we probably spent two years building the site to begin with. We’ve both got very strong contacts across the football industry, from clubs to suppliers to associations. To begin with it was about seeing what the response would be like and testing the market place.”
John: “The first version of the website was released in 2007. It was fairly basic but the reception was good. That ran for just over a year, then one of the first major things we did was to take part in ‘Grass Roots Football live’, which is an exhibition at the NEC in Birmingham billed as the UK’s No.1 event for Grass Roots Football. Finance4Growth helped us out financially with that. That was attended by 20,000 people. At that time we had about 3000 clubs that had registered to use the service. Within 3-4 months of doing the exhibition we had well over 10,000.
George: “Out of the pilot came a new brand: the football trade directory, so we renamed it. The website, then Sportsglobal, became the new company name.”
Best bits about working for yourself?
George: “We have a strong team behind us and for me the one of the best things is that we’ve been able to create new jobs for these hungry, young and driven people straight from University who’ve got top notch qualifications. We’ve been able to build our own team following our own vision. That’s given us a lot more strength to deliver for our clients because we’ve got all that energy and all those fresh ideas.”
What have been the biggest challenges so far?
John: “You’ve got to understand how people spend their money. Experience has told us that big companies use agencies, smaller companies may have a marketing manager who has to answer to a board, and very small companies maybe only one man makes a decision. You have to find out who owns the purse strings and we’ve been good at doing that.”
George: “For every business it’s all down to finance. We’ve got a clear, organic programme which we’re going through at the moment but, like every other business, everyone needs a source of capital – it just helps with the rate of growth. That’s where Finance4Growth have been so crucial for us both in the initial stages of the business and now going forward into our next phase.”
What would you have done differently if you could go back?
John: “I think we’d have chosen not to start the business during a recession! Joking apart that has been an issue for us. There are a lot of companies in football that have been struggling recently. Our business relies on people’s marketing and advertising budgets and they’ve been squeezed all over the place during the recent difficult economic times. But to actually set up and be successful during a recession shows the strength of our business I think.”
How does it feel to be your own boss?
John: “Working for yourself is hard, you’re taking total responsibility for everything and you have to cover the full spectrum of the business. You have a lot of demands on your time that aren’t necessarily business related. But the flipside to all that pressure is how rewarding your successes are as a result.”
Finally, a piece of advice for those thinking about starting up?
George: “For us it was important to pilot the idea. We thought it was important to get the product right, get the brand right and develop a website that functions correctly. We did this without taking massive financial risk because if we’d been wrong we could then have comfortably done something else or revisited the business model from a different angle.”
John: “I think also, we’ve put a lot of our time into this business well over and above the financial rewards in the short term because we have a long-term vision. If you’re not prepared to do that you won’t get your business off the ground.”
