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A flooring specialist, the boss of a fashion business, the creator of virtually indestructible earbuds and the man behind a taxi firm that has been snapping up rivals left, right and centre are through to the finals of the 2021 LeicestershireLive Business Executive of the Year Awards.

This year’s finalists attended a pre-awards drinks reception at the new £100 million Space Park Leicester, for a chance to meet the sponsors and judges and explain what makes their companies so good.

The judges will pick the eventual category winners in the next few weeks prior to the actual awards night at the Leicester Tigers Stadium on Thursday, November 4.

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Categories include executives in a small, medium and large business – one of whom will be named overall business person of the year – as well as a non-executive business person of the year, young business executive of the year and tech executive of the year.

A lifetime achievement award will also be given to one highly regarded business person at the black tie awards night.

The drinks reception was compered by Claire Mac from Leicester event agency Kreative Group, and guests were welcomed by Marc Reeves, marketplace publisher, Midlands & Wales at LeicesterhireLive and BusinessLive publisher Reach plc.

Professor Philip Baker, Pro Vice Chancellor, Research & Enterprise at awards headline sponsor the University of Leicester also welcomed guests and explained why the city and county have such a strong entrepreneurial spirit.

Jason Ashby, founder of º£½ÇÊÓƵ Flooring Direct is a finalist in the large business category, up against Brian Duffy, chief executive of the Watches of Switzerland Group, and Jon Jorgensen, chief sales officer at Loughborough-based business software specialist Access Group.

His business, which is based in Hinckley Commercial Park, is one of the biggest online flooring retailers in Britain and sells everything from wooden floors to laminates, vinyl flooring and underlays to the public and trade.

Mr Ashby said he was now expanding into selling carpets in his bid to hit £1 billion of turnover.

He said: “By the age of 21 I realised you could make money having fitters working for you so I had five teams running up and down the country installing for me.

“By the age of 28 I opened my first shop which was great for a couple of years then started to struggle and had to close down.

“We had £500 left in the bank and decided to go online which was the next growth area.

“Over six or seven years we grew to £16-17 million and continually self-invested. We decided to move everything to our own brand and take more control of the products and the margins and supply chain.

“Everything that comes in is sustainably sourced and we have grown 100 per cent over the last two years and taken staff from 85 up to 200 people.

“We managed to get to £50 million revenue self-funded but we did take investment on from BGF [described as the º£½ÇÊÓƵ’s “most active growth capital investor] because we wanted to accelerate growth.

“People buying online through Covid really accelerated that so we decided to speed things up ourselves and took more investment on and this year we will do £70 million.

“We have a 12 per cent share of our category which we dominate with the exception of B&Q, who have a 15 per cent market share.

“We’ve just invested in carpet cutting machines and that’s a market that’s three times bigger and we expect to have the same market share with that.

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“Having our own brands and being direct to customer keep all the middle men out of the way so we are in a very, very strong position.

“With the way the home improvement market is going in the º£½ÇÊÓƵ we are targeting £1 billion by 2030, which we will achieve, in a whole market that’s worth £40 billion.”

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