Michael Welch started at the tender age of 16 in his entrepreneurial adventures – having spent a year as a tyre fitter he decided he would do better on his own and set up his own mail order service for tyes.
Within a year, KwikFit had asked him to join them and sell his business to them – an offer he initially declined. Now this cheeky Scouser’s on the warpath again, using his knowledge and distribution network to empower customers to feel more confident about buying tyres.
How did you get started?
I was 16 when I set up my first business – I’d spent a year as a tyre fitter and decided to set up a mail order business. We had a tagline saying we were “the cheapest tyres in the world” which we probably wouldn’t get away with now!
But it was a cool business to be in and I learned a lot about making a brand visible with very little money.
I was approached by KwikFit when I was 17 and asked if I would bring the business to them and join them, as they were thinking of moving into the mail order market anyway.
Initially, I said no – I’d worked hard to build the business up and didn’t want to just hand it over – but everyone’s got a price and eventually I joined them.
What happened next?
I followed Tom (Sir Thomas Farmer, Kwik Fit founder) around as his bag carrier for about a year – that was a huge learning experience and I got to travel all the time.
They offered me another role in Kwik-Fit after that, but I didn’t really want to be a number in a big corporate, so I decided to quit and start all over again.
That must’ve been daunting…
Initially we just started selling tyres again through mail order, putting adverts into magazines. The difference was this time around we’re acting as a franchise – a bit like Interflora – and we act as a manager of distribution across 1,700 garages across the UK.
Any problems finding funding?
Yes – we had to rely on cashflow; getting money from customers and then paying the suppliers and garages afterwards. After a while we got a few shareholders to donate some cash and started to build the business.
At one point, I decided to write Sir Terry Leahy a letter – the former Tesco boss – to ask for his help. He went to the same school as my dad, so I thought that was enough of a reason.
I got a letter back from him in three days – it turns out nobody ever writes to him. It just goes to show, when everyone else assumes something won’t happen, you should go out and try anyway. I learned a lot from him.
How did your sales perform?
We made £2,600 in sales in the first year – this year we’re looking at a runrate of £30 million with more than 500,00 customers.
What’s next?
The job now is to keep investing. We had our first TV advertising slot this year – we sponsored Sky’s Formula 1 channel and had a few TV spots on it including an advert of a granny doing donuts in her car – that’s typical of Black Circles humour! We’re planning to invest in more advertising on ITV next year.
Our sales aim is to make £100m in the next three years. It’s ambitious, but we’re continuing to take market share and increasing sales when the market is slowly down.