An e-commerce business selling engineering components, which friends started in the Black Country last January, is aiming for a £0.5m turnover in its first year of trading.
The success of Engineers Mate Ltd has delighted its three founding directors, Jon Head, Andy Bowyer and Andy’s father Chris, as their young company has already exceeded ambitious growth targets. This expansion has resulted in them making two moves to larger premises and the company is now based on the Pensnett Estate, Kingswinford, which is owned and managed by London and Cambridge Properties Ltd (LCP).
The business has several routes to market, including the provision of a personal service to local account customers and, most importantly, the company’s very extensive website: www.engineersmate.com Their product range covers almost 200,000 products, which is arguably the largest on-line shop for engineering components and spares in Europe. The website has attracted a huge interest in the market and has surprised the directors by the amount of export business it has created across Europe, the Americas and as far afield as Australia, where, for instance, the Australian Ministry of Defence has become a regular customer.
Jon explained that whilst he met Andy and Chris through a cricketing connection, their mix of skills and experience was invaluable when they were defining the business processes, choosing the IT infrastructure and developing relationships with key business partners. Jon added: “Running a 24 hours a day business, with the reality of reaching every corner of the world, is a most exciting prospect. Basically, we are always open for business.”
Operations Director, Andy said: “We chose to relocate to the Pensnett Estate because of the site’s good security, its location and excellent access links. Although the warehouse is filling up rapidly, we are not planning a further move for some time!”