Small high growth businesses set for a boost as Notonthehighstreet.com raises £1 million.
Notonthehighstreet.com (www.notonthehighstreet.com), one of the fastest growing UK online shopping websites which supports over 700 of Britain’s most creative small businesses, announces further investment in the company of £1 million as Venrex LP, owner of Smythson and stakeholder in a number of high growth luxury and gift businesses including Astley Clarke, becomes a significant minority shareholder in the company. Mark Esiri, Chairman of Venrex, joins notonthehighstreet.com’s board, which includes Tom Teichman, Chairman and Founder of SPARK Ventures plc, whose company was the first outside investor in notonthehighstreet.com in March 2007.
As part of this investment round, Giovanna Latimer and Serena Coulson, former Directors at Avent, who helped mastermind its sale to Philips Electronics for £450million in 2006, have taken a small private stake in the company and will sit on the board. Holly Tucker and Sophie Cornish, Founders and Managing Directors of notonthehighstreet.com, retain a majority shareholding in the company.
Founded by Holly Tucker and Sophie Cornish in April 2006, notonthehighstreet.com began selling high quality original products from 130 of Britain’s best small businesses, growing to 350 in 2007 and doubling in 2008 to more than 700 small businesses selling over 20,000 products under the notonthehighstreet.com platform. The company experienced unprecedented rapid growth of 600 per cent last year which is continuing throughout 2008 on average by 250 per cent for the equivalent month, year on year. In 2006 the company turned over retail transactions of £100,000 and forecasts transactions of £3.5 million for 2008. The key to its success is offering consumers a unique umbrella shopping website with a single basket and checkout, giving them original product offerings and service that are not available on the high street.
Holly Tucker and Sophie Cornish comment: “Having experienced such rapid growth over the last year following SPARK Ventures’ investment, we are very excited by this latest investment injection led by Venrex, a company with exceptional expertise in the online gift and luxury arenas, with further backing from Giovanna and Serena’s outstanding commercial competence. This will enable notonthehighstreet.com to invest in infrastructure and marketing to continue its aggressive rampage through the online gift market and grow its position as the headquarters for all lifestyle businesses. All our investors bring unrivalled experience in growing a fast track high growth business like ours and share our vision of making notonthehighstreet.com Europe’s leading online gift business. The entrepreneurial approaches and specialist expertise at targeting an AB retail audience of all our investors makes them the online retail dream team.”
Mark Esiri, Chairman of Venrex, comments: “Notonthehighstreet.com has such impressive credentials that we instantly saw the growth potential for it to rapidly become the number one source for non-high street gifts in Europe. We are thrilled to be making this investment: Holly and Sophie are a fantastic team and are building one of the UK’s most exciting Internet businesses.”
Tom Teichman adds: “Not many companies I know are even reaching their targets at the moment in credit crunch times, let alone breaking them consistently month after month as notonthehighstreet.com is doing. Since SPARK’s investment just over a year ago, I’ve witnessed first hand Holly and Sophie’s dynamism and exceptional skills in driving notonthehighstreet.com forward and am excited about their future plans to take the business to even higher levels.”
Ends
Note to Editors: Holly Tucker, Sophie Cornish, Mark Esiri and Tom Teichman are available for interview.
For further information, interviews and visuals,
please contact: Julie Turner at press@notonthehighstreet.com or
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Notonthehighstreet.com
Notonthehighstreet.com was an overnight success when it launched on 3 April 2006. An extensive PR campaign drove 16,000 unique users to the site on the first day and now thousands of unique users visit the site daily and over 500 national and regional newspapers and magazines have reported news and features about the site. In October 2006, notonthehighstreet.com was named a top 50 e-boutique by The Independent. In 2007, it became the London winner of the Grazia 02 awards, a London regional finalist of HSBC’s small business awards, and MSN’s Best Shopping Website of 2007. It has most recently been listed as a 2008 Startups 100 top UK new company by StartUps.co.uk. Holly Tucker and Sophie Cornish were also named in Marie Claire as one of the top 23 UK businesswomen shaping the future of Britain.
March 2007 saw a major development for notonthehighstreet.com when SPARK Ventures plc became a significant minority shareholder in the company, and Tom Teichman, SPARK’s Chairman, joined the board of notonthehighstreet.com. He was the first investor in lastminute.com. SPARK continues to hold the largest stake in notonthehighstreet.com after its Founders.
Notonthehighstreet.com launched its first mail order catalogue in October 2007 featuring a selection of hundreds of products by partners from the website. Its 2008 catalogue will be double the size.
Co-founders of notonthehighstreet.com, Holly Tucker and Sophie Cornish, between them have over 30 years of media and marketing experience working with brands such at L’Oreal, Boots No 7 and 17 Cosmetics and Monsoon, top five advertising agencies such as Publicis and major magazine houses including Condé Nast and The National Magazine Company. Both have also run their own small businesses and worked on the launch teams of other internet start up companies. They met when they worked in advertising 12 years ago and became best friends not realising that over a decade later they would become highly successful business partners.
Venrex LP
Venrex is a private investment firm with a focus on identifying start-ups and growth companies with well-defined market demand and management teams that exhibit high growth/profit potential. Its existing portfolio includes Smythson, Noble Macmillan, Astley Clarke and Seedcamp among others.
SPARK Ventures plc
SPARK Ventures is the leading quoted early-stage venture capital company in Europe. It manages over £240 million on behalf of major institutional investors, leading UK universities, and three quoted venture capital trusts.
SPARK invests in entrepreneurs to create dynamic businesses in the technology, media, telecoms and healthcare & life sciences sectors. As well as capital, it brings a wealth of experience of developing high growth companies from early stage through to IPO or trade sale, adding value to its investments through active support and strategic direction.
Some of SPARK’s exits include Mergermarket, which was successfully sold to the Financial Times for $192 million in 2006, Lastminute.com, Footfall, Nomad, Pricerunner, Elata, Glycart, OHM and Avidex. www.SPARKventures.com
Tom Teichman, SPARK Ventures Chairman, has over 30 years of venture capital and investment banking experience with firms including Bankers Trust, Credit Suisse and Nesbitt Burns. He has raised over £2bn for companies and has backed many successful early stage businesses, many from start up, all the way to flotation (London and NASDAQ). He was on the Boards of most of these for several years including ARC, lastminute.com, Argonaut, Dialog, System C Healthcare, Wellington Investments and Libertas Capital. The total value of exits in the public markets of these companies easily exceeds £1bn.