A North East craft company has grand designs on becoming a £10m business within five years after making its second acquisition this year.
Katy Sue Designs has been making and selling craft and cake-decorating products, tools, and unusual cake moulds since 1993, but its sales have reached new levels after a series of strategic moves – and a TV appearance on Great British Bake Off of an unusual seahorse mould.
Ambitious growth plans have been put in place to help it create a £10m revenue business employing over 100 staff and, after securing investment in late 2018, the business has been on the acquisition trail to build out the business, consolidating a highly fragmented 海角视频 craft market.
The firm started the year with the acquisition of a Hertfordshire rival, Craft Creations, when its founders announced their retirement, a move which saw it take on the paper craft assets of the business in a number of lorry loads and expand into extra units in South Shields.
The company also made a significant investment in equipment to print, foil and cut paper products, which was funded by the ERDF SAM Project at the University of Sunderland.
Now the company – winner of the export award at this year’s Durham, Sunderland and South Tyneside Business Awards – has snapped up local MDF and acrylic business Acrylic Crafts.
The deal means the company has grown its workforce from 18 to 30 staff, putting it on track to top revenues of £2m this year, 200% growth on the previous year.
Sue Balfour, chief executive and founder of Katy Sue Designs, said: “We have been working with Acrylic Crafts for a number of months now, and recently launched a range of MDF shapes which sold incredibly well on TV.
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“Our highland cow was particularly popular in Scotland, where it has become a symbol of the country’s heritage.
“We expect to launch new MDF and acrylic products shortly and are looking forward to working closely with Phil Davies and his experienced team.”
Phil Davies, managing director of Acrylic Craft, said: “We quickly saw the benefit of combining resources with Katy Sue Designs, using their digital marketing capability to grow our online sales whilst taking advantage of the huge investment they have made in their sophisticated warehousing and dispatch capability.
“Having invested significantly ourselves in manufacturing capacity, bringing our laser cutting machines up to 7, we now believe we can double our business over the next 12 months following this deal”.
Katy Sue Designs crafts, designs and distributes all of its products from its base in South Shields, and exports to more than 50 countries around the world.
Its investors – Neil Stephenson as chairman, and digital entrepreneurs Gary Hunter and Sam Morton – are helping it seek out new opportunities and develop its sales channels.