Field Marketing News » eXPD8 Field Marketing News - Dec 10 - Fast Track 100
eXPD8 Field Marketing News - Dec 10 - Fast Track 100
News Releases 2010
December 2010
eXPD8 Gains Place on Sunday Times Virgin Fast Track 100 List
The 2010 14th annual Sunday Times Virgin Fast Track 100 has put eXPD8 at number 82 in the list that recognises the UK's 100 fastest growing businesses. It also ranked us in 7th position in the top 10 biggest employers from the list.
In previous years, brands such as MoonPig, Innocent, Net-a-Porter, Hotel Chocolat and Tyrrells Crisps have been featured. eXPD8 have gained this prestigious honour because we achieved annual compound growth of 49.60% over the last 3 financial years.
Over these past three years the one hundred companies featured by Fast Track increased their sales by an average of 85% a year; to combined sales of £4bn. Pre-tax profits were £280m and average margins, 8.3%. Together they have 22,633 employees, and have created 16,474 jobs over the 3 years.
While these numbers are impressive, they paint a somewhat mixed picture about the state of private businesses in the UK. The 85% sales growth figure was down from 95% in 2009, but in contrast the combined pre-tax profits rose by £82m and margins also increased by 0.6% from 7.7% last time out.
Sir Richard Branson of Virgin, which has sponsored the league table for all 14 years, commented:
“2010 has been a year of much change for the UK in political and economic terms. Business has weathered a couple of the toughest years I can remember, but we are starting to see some pick-up in key sectors. Against this economic background the strong performance of the Fast Track 100 companies is to be especially applauded.”
Retail Services is a tough industry where turnover is hard won, and contracts are difficult to gain and retain. We believe that our success during these difficult times can be attributed to our experienced and dedicated staff, the company’s retail heritage, our focus on service excellence and fantastic systems. eXPD8 firmly believe in the value of having good people working within the service industry and our IIP (Investor In People) award illustrates just how important this is to us.
Pete Bailey, founder and director of eXPD8 said “Growing from nothing to create circa 1,200 jobs in 8 years has been a great achievement. None of this would be possible without our fantastic team who should be very proud of themselves”
The Company has a highly efficient infrastructure, with a small central team delivering a cost effective service. We embrace technology by having an innovative call management system and a mobile workforce throughout the UK and Ireland who make use of handheld PDA’s to enable them to provide ‘near real time updates’ to our clients. In the fast paced results driven world we find ourselves, this speed, accuracy and transparency is invaluable as it empowers clients to make informed decisions based on the quality field data captured.
eXPD8 has continued to grow during 2010 and has ambitious plans for 2011. We currently recruiting 150 part time staff, and expect to create 300 part time jobs next year of which 20% will be in the South West, together with additional full time posts in Bristol.
eXPD8 are the only Field Marketing/ Retail Services company to make the list since 2006, so we hope to build on this success by striving for even higher standards and aim to improve on the ranking when next year’s Fast Track 100 list is published.
