PRIME business club

“You mustn’t paint yourself into an age corner. I don’t really feel any particular age. I just feel part of the business environment.”

Those are the views of 53-year-old Hugo Rose from Colchester, who has set up a web-based parcel-minding service, MyParcel.

While Hugo may not feel his age, he is certainly putting to use his 20 years’ of experience in the wine and mail order business.

For many years, Hugo, who was recently a runner-up in a national competition for online businesses being run by those over 50, worked in the wine trade. “Anyone involved in the business would swiftly understand that there is a thorny problem in the area of delivery,” he points out. Many people order their wine from specialist wine merchants, to be delivered to their home. But when customers aren’t in to accept delivery, cases of wine are too large to go through the letterbox and too valuable to be left on the doorstep.

Hugo decided that he could do something about this problem and, at the same time, fulfil his own ambition of running his own business. “If you are turning 50 and you’re not the managing director, then you do have to make a decision,” he comments. “I could have stayed put, done another 15 years and then retired. But I always wanted to run my own business and I couldn’t see the job I was doing developing any future. I was looking for a greater challenge than simply nursing my pension.”

Unlike some who start businesses later in life, Hugo was not forced into the move through redundancy or other changes, but had to make a clear decision to move into self-employment. “I had a good job and there was no need to leave, but I had a business idea with potential, which I could do from scratch with a blank piece of paper,” he explains. Hugo had to weigh up the risks of setting up his own business against the potential risk of remaining in his existing job and, as he points out, while it might have seemed safe to continue in employment, there was no guarantee that it would be a smooth run through to a comfortable retirement.

Having made his decision, Hugo began work on setting up his business, MyParcel. The vital component of the business was the increasing reliability of the internet as a business tool. “I realised that I had something with potential national reach, which would require a sophisticated website to do a lot of the work,” he says. “The website is the back office, essentially, and means we can achieve that national reach with relatively small resources.”

Hugo resigned from his full-time job in June 2004 and began to develop his business. Having registered the company name, Safekeepers Ltd, in order to start the business off and get some business stationery, Hugo then spent time working on the name for the service itself and settled on MyParcel in part because it was both available and registerable as a trademark.

The idea of MyParcel is to provide pick-up points for undelivered mail-order parcels, so customers can collect them up locally, at their own convenience. “We have started with five depots and I want to build up to 20 or 25, so cover the whole of the London area,” says Hugo.

“I think it is important that in the first year of leaving work, the next steps are carefully mapped out,” he adds. “You’re pushing off from the side, but you don’t want to push off into a complete fog. I was careful to set up some consulting work, which would keep me afloat for the first year or so.”

The initial phase of setting up the business has required investment by both Hugo and private investors. Hugo used some of his own resources, has gained investment from private investors and has also diverted some of his consultancy earnings into the business. He did not borrow money from banks, calculating that they would be unlikely to lend to a completely new business with no track record. “Banks don’t provide risk capital, that’s just not what they do,” he points out.

The main planks of Hugo’s business development have been a significant investment in website development and negotiating with the company that provides the storage points. “We don’t own the bricks and mortar of where our service is run from, so there have been a lot of meetings to sort out the details of that,” he says. “I was already aware that self-storage depots were springing up everywhere, so I targeted that industry.”

But more important than either the financial resources needed or the specific components of the business itself has been the need for personal commitment, according to Hugo. “I felt the business was achievable with commitment and enthusiasm and self-belief is very important, because it leads others to share that belief,” he comments. “It does almost go without saying, but you really do need an unshakeable belief in the potential of what you are doing and a clear view of how to do it.”

Hugo acknowledges that having got the business registered, it then took another year or so to actually get it up and running. “Everything takes longer than you would like,” he points out. With the company formally launched in 2005, Hugo is now employing two former colleagues from the wine trade to assist him in the new business on a part-time basis, and is now looking to consolidate the business and begin to scale it up.

“Starting something that hasn’t been done before has been a challenge,” he comments. “It is a challenge at a personal level and there have been hurdles and difficulties all the time, but if you believe that you have a service people will want to use, you have to remind yourself of that and recharge the batteries.”

Hugo also recommends others to spend some time away from everyday life when contemplating making the leap into starting something new. “In a job, it can be hard to think yourself into another place,” he points out. “And you are not choosing an easy life, but what I have learned over the past two years is that I can get used to the idea of uncertainty. I now have the confidence that comes from that, and feeling that I have the contacts, knowledge and skill to deal with whatever the future throws at me.”

“Go It Alone LITE - the secrets of self employment” is a free 38-page ebook produced by UK business adviser Geoff Burch in association with Essential Business Guide. Geoff advocates an enthusiastic but strictly realistic approach to setting up a new business.

The Nobel Peace Prize has just gone to Muhammad Yunus of the Grameen Bank, who pioneered the whole concept of microlending. Yunus founded Grameen in 1976 during a famine in Bangladesh. Today it has 6.6 million borrowers of whom 97% are women.

This award is a big breakthrough for the whole microfinace sector, and may attract extra support to similar schemes throughout the world - including the UK.

But some in the microfinance sector are sounding a note of caution. Grameen is very unusual in that it has succeeded in becoming big enough to make a significant impact. Most microfinance schemes are very much smaller, and have often run into trouble when trying to scale up.

Alistair Owens, 58, from Doncaster, is the overall winer of Intel’s Profit@50 competition for people who have set up in business after the age of 50. He wins £8,000 from Intel for his business Keen2Learn, along with an up-to-the-minute laptop and mentoring from Yo! Sushi founder Simon Woodroffe.

The website (www.keen2learn.co.uk) makes it easier for parents to help their children achieve success by giving them access to the same kinds of educational teaching resources used in today’s schools.

The two runners up are Hugo Rose from Colchester in Essex and and Sally Walton from St. Leonard’s-on-Sea in Sussex.

The judges were impressed with 53-year-old Mr Rose’s web-based parcel-minding business. Established last year, MyParcel (www.myparcel.co.uk) has been designed to facilitate the rapidly-growing online shopping sector by building up a network of drop-off points to eliminate the problem of undeliverable parcels - in other words parcels delivered when the customer is out and unable to receive them. With this venture, Mr Rose is putting his 20 years of experience in the wine and mail-order businesses to excellent use.

The judges also liked 55-year-old Sally Walton’s ecological design business. Established in May this year, carry-A-bag (www.carry-a-bag.com) offers a stylish alternative to the re-usable shopping bag – made from a combination of organic Fairtrade calico, mattress ticking and recycled curtains. With this venture, Mrs Walton is putting her past training in graphic design to excellent use.

“Now that my four grown-up children have all left the nest, I have time to devote to my own business”, said Sally. “I would advise anyone with the inclination to just go for it.”

When overall winner Alistaire Owens came up with the idea for an online business selling educational products he decided to quit his job in marketing to make his dream a reality. Although he was confident enough in his idea to quit his job, he says it did take “a lot of resolve”.

He persuaded his son Stuart, 27, to also come on board and the two set up www.Keen2Learn.co.uk in 2005. Mr Owens, who has 20 years of experience in marketing, said the business has given him a whole new lease of life. “I love the total immersion it allows, not to mention the feeling that you’re your own boss”, he said.

Intel director Tristan Wilkinson said “At a time when age discrimination in the workplace is at the forefront of the employment agenda, Mr Owens is a shining example to other potential over 50s entrepreneurs that setting up your own business can be a very viable option.”

Simon Woodroffe, head of the Profit@50 judging panel, agrees. “Alistair Owens is a fantastic example to other potential 50-plus entrepreneurs out there. People like him should be encouraged to achieve all they can.” Simon went on to say that he had never met anyone - even those whose businesses had failed, regret taking the risk.