Classic-leisure, Trampolines4Fun, Classic-lawns

Peter Mulcock gave up a salary to start what appears to be a typical family business selling garden-related equipment on three interlinked, Actinic-powered websites: Classic-lawns, Classic-leisure and Trampolines4fun. But the trampoline sites designer is actually Peter's15-year-old son, Oliver who was still at school at the time.

Ecommerce has also enabled them to follow their dream and split their homes between the South of France and Gloucestershire. Oliver built the site with Actinic Developer in a week on a budget of £4000. Now he maintains the pages for his father while away at school. Peter has found that operating multiple niche sites works better than having a broad range in one store. E.g. Trampolines4fun sold 100 trampolines in 2 months when it opened in October 2004, whereas it took Classic-leisure the whole summer to sell a hundred.

The total business turns over around £800,000 p.a. and is in profit. Peter expects to top £1 million in the next year. The seasonality of all of the websites will be addressed next with something to plug the gap in the winter months. However, the idea of living solely in France had to be revised because of the UK & French fiscal systems and red tape, so now they spend 3-4 months abroad.

Other practicalities militated against basing the business overseas: customers often phone and are confused by the foreign ring tone and so far there's no way round this.

Website: www.classic-leisure.co.uk Location: France and Glos

(Full story is 1144 words)