Linda Lewis meets David Bide and the team behind Armadillo Lighting, who are specialists in industrial lighting. For two decades they've been illuminating big venues from football stadiums to hospitals. The team also discuss with Linda how LED lighting has been opening up even more possibilities for innovative design on large projects.
Veevers Carter are one of the top floristry design firms in the country, providing huge displays for big ticket corporate events, including the Chelsea Flower Show. Linda Lewis meets the founder Ming Veevers Carter and her husband Mark Beever, who also runs the sister company Event Concept, at their warehouse in South London. The firm have built up a formidable reputation, and a multimillion pound turnover, producing bigger and more complicated floral and architectural artistry for large corporate events at the Natural History Museum, the V&A and various celebrity clients.
Linda visited the founders of Flock- Emma Sexton and Megan Thomas. Flock is a curated collaborative network, where business is done entirely collaboratively, where giving and taking is equal, and where people don't need to compete. Flock is a business in its own right, running events, actively looking for franchise opportunities, with global ambitions.
Linda Lewis visits the people behind Cauli Rice an innovative range of low carb, low calory rice made from cauliflower which available in supermarkets. About a year ago Gem Misa was one of the finalists slightly nervously lined up to pitch their business idea to Richard Branson in the annual Virgin competition for start-ups and new businesses. An advertising campaign was part of their prize, Cauli Rice got a lot of media attention. And not long afterwards their innovative range of low carb, low calorie rice made from cauliflower was launched in supermarkets and online.
Since then, co-founders Gem Misa and her husband Jamie have raised more investment, won more prizes and are already planning various new flavours and business extras, such as a subscription service for people watching their weight who want their low carbs delivered straight to the door in a regular order. With sales soaring, they've also opened an office in Battersea, South London.
As exam season draws closer and closer, a free new app is bringing a fresh new approach to studying and revision. Gojimo have over 160,000 practice questions on all popular subjects and offer tutoring via instant messaging, available 24/7. Linda Lewis meets the founder, George Burgess, and the young team behind Gojimo on Company Casebook who explain how it all started.
POD is a firm with a mission: to change the way people eat on-the-go, selling healthy fast food to busy office workers. The company was set up by Tim Hall and Kate Skerritt and they opened the first branch in 2005 in the City of London. Now under a new management team Linda Lewis looks at their ambitious plans to expand the business beyond their current 22 branches, but still keeping to the ethos of using innovative ingredients and unusual recipes.
Linda Lewis speaks to Shweta Jhajharia, founder of the London Coaching Group, who claim to be London’s number one coaching firm that can help you achieve your desired next level in business. Shweta discusses how her company has grown since 2008 and how she balances her professional and personal life.
Linda Lewis focuses on electric cars this week and speaks to Pod Point, a Shoreditch-based company that makes charging units for electric cars that have been gradually been installed in homes, car parks and airports. They describe themselves are the UK’s largest suppliers of electric charging solutions. She speaks to Erik Fairbairn, CEO of the company.
Linda Lewis speaks to Luke Watson and his team about GB Energy Supply, who claim to offer the cheapest bills on the market. After their launch last April, Linda finds out how the company has grown steadily over the past year and how they have reached just under 200,000 customer fuel accounts.
Linda Lewis speaks to Dave Millett, Founder of Equinox, an independent Telecoms Brokerage and Consultancy company, based in Putney. Since 2009 they have gathered over 250 brokerage clients around the country and are managing a number of international projects on the go as well.