A growing business

It has taken its own direct route to new business heights through management buy in, acquisition and e-commerce all within eighteen months.

The recent acquisition of Two Wests & Elliot and the development of the e-commerce arm www.bradshawsdirect.com has helped push turnover past £3 million in the last six months, an increase of 20 per cent over the same period last year. Confidence is high of achieving a year-end sales figure of at least £5 million.

Bradshaws, based in Clifton Moor, supplies water gardening products direct to the UK's growing band of avid home horticulturists via mail order. The group now supplies water gardening products to 125,000 customers, through a call centre employing 14 people and processing 1,200 orders a week.

The recently completed, healthy addition of complementary company Two Wests & Elliot, which manufactures greenhouse staging and hardware out of Chesterfield, is the icing on the cake for Andrew Ferrey (MD) and David Fordham (commercial director) at Bradshaws. They only bought into Bradshaws in February 1999 and are delighted with the way things have developed.

He paid tribute to his bankers, Lloyds TSB Commercial, for its effective financial support, assisting the company's impressive growth, saying: "This has been an incredibly complicated period for the organisation. We are delighted that, with the help of the relationship banking team at Lloyds TSB Commercial, headed by Andrew Foster, we have been able to achieve so much."

Andrew Foster notes that, "if companies like Bradshaws are to succeed in this increasingly competitive and complex professional world, they need to work hand in hand with commercial advisers determined to meet their objectives."

Andrew Ferrey predicts a rosy future. He said: "The market continues to expand on the back of increased leisure spend in the 35-55 age bracket and through increased broadcast exposure. On the Internet side, our website is proving extremely popular with sales currently increasing month by month."