An ex-RAF pilot has battled back from bankruptcy and losing three homes to spearhead an e-cigarette firm clocking up £16 million in turnover and £43 million of 海角视频 retail sales last year.
Adrian Everett’s rags to riches story has seen the E-Lites executive at the helm of a revolution in smoking habits, with 1.2 million Brits now turning to electronic products despite a ban on their use in many places.
In conjunction with Handsworth childhood friend Michael Ryan, Mr Everett has built E-Lites into a firm with more than 60 staff in Bromsgrove and Worcester – and is now targeting growth in Europe, South Africa and elsewhere.
READ MORE: {}
But the rise of the fast-expanding distributor of e-cigarettes, now stocked in all the big four supermarkets, is a far cry from his financial woes seven years ago when he left the RAF after serving in Iraq, Afghanistan and Sierra Leone.
He explained: “I went bankrupt in 2007. During my time in the RAF I bought investment properties and rented them out, but I couldn’t keep up with the mortgage payments.
“It was tortuous. I didn’t want to go bankrupt but I ended up losing three properties, two flats and a house in Swindon. I thought that the value of the properties would only go up. I spent a year floating around – I didn’t have a fixed address. Michael was also having a tough time going through a divorce and had fallen foul of the property experience in Spain.
“We spent over a year creating the business and we wanted to borrow £20,000 from the bank but they would not give it to us. I couldn’t blame them – I was not in a very stable financial place at the time.
“One of my brothers lent me £5,000 on his credit card and Michael’s parents lent him £5,000 from their savings. We started the business with £5,000 each. It was a really tight budget but last year 海角视频 smokers spent over £43 million on E-Lites products.”
Most Read
The firm took off after the pair travelled to the Far East to meet Chinese e-cigarette manufacturers and launched the company at the Gadget Show Live at the NEC in April 2009.
“We are making a profit but we have shifted from an online business into retail products. We started going into retail in January 2012 and now, by 2014, we are in over 24,000 retailers,” he said.
“It has been a really fast-paced five years. It was just the two of us for over a year but now we are looking at building a new sales and merchandising staff of 90 across the 海角视频 to help us grow into more retail locations and manage the ones we have. We are getting towards a workforce of 150 plus and our ambition is to go beyond that.”
But he warned that E-Lites was still in its early stages of growth.
He said the company was not currently generating enough profits to put resources into markets such as Germany, Spain and France.
“We are due to launch in South Africa through Spar, and it is through initiatives like that that we are able to grow internationally,” he added. “We have a really clear plan ahead but we are struggling to choose which way to take the investment. We are working with several of the big investments banks and there are different ways, such as private equity or family investments.
“But we will probably have to release some of the equity in the business to raise some working capital. We are looking to raise between £30 million and £40 million to expand.”