Fast growing firm launches crowd funding initiative
A Leeds-based mechanise company has revealed ambitious development plans and is asking people to invest in a crowd funding initiative to raise at least £350,000 for its next phase of growth.
Awesome Merchandise, run by husband and wife duo Luke and Charlotte Hodson, is one of the fastest growing businesses in the north and last year reported a turnover of £5.5m – a 50% growth on the previous year.
Through the planned fundraising – which has so far raised more than 40% of the funds needed – they are planning to triple the product range, open a factory in the USA, build a new team in the USA, build a new e-commerce platform and move to faster shipper times. The Hodsons also want to double turnover.
The business was founded in 2005 with the purchase of a handheld badge machine and the initial idea of raising a bit of cash to help through university. By the summer of 2006, Luke and Charlotte were making 3,000 badges a day.
In 2007, they moved into a 387 sq ft unit and started producing other custom merchandise. In 2014, the firm moved in to their current UK home, to a 11,000 sq ft unit and had 35 employees, whilst quadrupling production and offering hundreds of different products.
They have since scaled up the factory to 23,000 sq ft and now have over 80 staff. Awesome Merchandise has 70,000 customers and has made over 65 million items since it launched.
Luke Hodson, owner of Awesome Merch, said: “We wanted to give the opportunity to all our supporters to get a piece of Awesome Merch. From customers, suppliers to anyone interest and vested in our success longer term. Banks prefer tangible assets such as property or machines, I don’t think what we do as a company fits with their more traditional view on business.
“We predict the company will grow another 50% in the next year alone and the money raised will be used to launch the US operation and grow the UK offering.
“We opened up investment to our early supporters and have raised 40% in a week. Which is so astounding to us. We can not thank them enough! With the promotional merchandise market in the UK is worth around £1bn and in the US, it is £23bn, we see this as a huge
growth opportunity.”
The Crowd Cube will run for 36 days.
