A quartet of start-ups for de Poel founder Sanders

ENTREPRENEUR Matthew Sanders, the founder of Cheshire temporary labour procurer de Poel, has launched a quartet of start-ups in 2015, all of which have hit the ground running.

Last month, Sanders celebrated 14 years since the launch of his first company de Poel. His Knutsford-based business group, Brookfield Rose,  has since grown to turnover £755m and employs around 250 staff.

While de Poel remains the largest part of Brookfield Rose, the four new ventures take the total number of companies within the group to 13.

The others are de Poel health+care, de Poel Community, software business for recruitment agencies Flo, payroll umbrella company Paraplus, deliveryquotecompare.com, compliance consultancy Compli With Us, de Poel Nederland and Leopard Software.

The four new businesses are de Poel Education, de Poel One Source, Zoek and Suits Me.

“We will concentrate on running everything profitably now and all growth will be organic – we are not looking to acquire at the moment,” he told TheBusinessDesk.

de Poel Education, a reiteration of the company’s successful neutral vendor recruitment business, is clearly the one Sanders is most excited about.

“It has massive potential and is a sector ripe for help. We have done so well in health and care and can do the same with this in education.

“We probably should have done this earlier, but we needed a specialist in education to lead this.”

The company launched in June and has 23 Yorkshire schools signed up, ready for the start of the new school year. 

Sanders says that the plan is to be the largest provider of teaching professionals in the UK within two years.

Meanwhile, de Poel One Source is billed as a neutral vendor  that has all the benefits of de Poel but for businesses with a smaller spend on temporary labour.

Launched in February, the company has names such as Silverspoon Sugar and Gilbraith Tankers on the books and according to Sanders will be turning over £25m within a year.

“The de Poel business was set up for companies with a need for temporary labour in multiple locations and sites, with an annual spend of £3m to £5m in agency labour. de Poel One Source caters to organisations who spend up to £3m a year.

“So far we have 15 clients and 15 in discussion. We will exit the year with 50 clients – winning an average of one a week.”

Next is Zoek, an app that has a modern take on the traditional jobs board, whose model involves being the cheapest in the marketplace.

“Monster.com charges between £120-200 an advert, we charge £20 max – and that can be discounted to £10 or even under for bulk users,” said Sanders.

It has around 40,000 users in any one week with 1,000 customers advertising on the app.

“Now 60% of browsing is done on mobile devices. Our [app] is geared to that technology – with Google Maps for locations, push notifications – it is just a lot smarter,” said Sanders, promising more functionality by the first quarter of 2016.

Sanders has invested £1m in the company to date, with a further £5m being invested by 2016/17.

It is hiring 30 new sales staff, taking the total number of people within that business to 37 and will be live in Germany by January 2017 and then in the Netherlands.

The final start-up, Suits Me, is a pre-paid debit card with online banking facilities aimed at workers employed by recruitment agencies who struggle to open bank accounts, such as legal immigrants who have no work history or address within the country.

“It is more than a pre-paid debit card,” said Sanders. “This has internet banking, you can draw your wages down, pay bills and ring fence savings. You can do everything you can do with a bank account except for direct debits – and that’s coming too.”

The card also offers high street discounts and cashback and once a user has a track record of paying wages onto the card, they can also draw down in advance.

“Like any pre-paid card, you are charged to use it – to make a cash withdrawal or an overseas transfer but ours is the most competitive in the market,” he said.

At the moment, Suits Me has just over 1,000 users a week and Sanders said that whilst it won’t be profitable until next year, the business is starting to build momentum.

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