Founder: Jo Jenners
Founded: January 2011
Website: www.3blondebears.co.uk

Manufacturer and online retailer 3 Blonde Bears has shown rapid and sustainable growth since launch two years ago and its Startups 100 entry last year, with its personalised gifts proving consistently popular among its predominately ABC1 consumers. Founder Jo Jenner’s firm continues to be one of Notonthehighstreet.com’s highest grossing partners, and has successfully moved premises and developed new systems to cope with its success. As well as through NOTHS, the products are sold directly via a website and through further, carefully selected, partners. Having seen an incredibly successful 2012, the plan was to achieve 55% growth in 2013, a target that’s looking very comfortably within reach. This has been helped by savvy diversification into men’s gifting, which is now the best performing area since its launch in spring 2012, and B2B, with products selling well within the events sector. 

Founder: Damian Kimmelman
Founded: October 2010 (launched April 2011)
Website: www.duedil.com

Duedil, short for due diligence, has caused quite a stir in the business world since launch and its appearance in the Startups 100 2012 list – it is the world’s first free-to-access database of company financials and director information for private companies in the UK and Ireland. Duedil’s customers are primarily business owners and professionals but the service’s appeal caters to a wide plethora of users including corporate lawyers, bankers and private users. The site’s freemium model allows registered users to view company information for free, with the option of paying for features such as an advanced search function, company credit information and Group Graphs, which map out corporate structures in a visual format. The firm plans to drive the next stage of its growth by developing corporate accounts to serve entire organisations, allowing a company’s employees to access Duedil’s subscription service on a daily basis. Following this, Duedil has plans for expansion into Europe.

Founder: Mats Klingberg
Founded: December 2009 (launched September 2010)
Website: www.trunkclothiers.com 

Whilst a menswear store in itself is not particularly unique, Trunk founder Mats Klingsberg wanted to create a personalised shopping experience that addressed the gap between big department stores like Selfridges and Libertys and the flagship brand retailers on Bond Street and Sloane Square. Based in Marylebone’s Chiltern Street, Trunk brings together ‘a lovingly curated range’ of clothes with an impeccable service and relaxed atmosphere. Offering the feel of a small store but with big brands and no attitude, the shop has already amassed a global clientele. Listed as one of Walpole’s ‘Brands of Tomorrow’ in 2011, Klingberg has used his background in both luxury fashion and the financial services industry to create an independent retailer with the potential to compete with the big boys. An online offering launched in 2012 and Klingberg has also begun developing Trunk branded bags with plans to expand the collection into a range of clothing shortly. Set to achieve over £1m in turnover for 2013 and with plans to open a second store this year, this premium store is seemingly defying the recession. 

Founder: Dan McGuire
Founded: June 2011 (launched in May 2012)
Website: www.cube19.com

Since appearing in last year’s Startups 100, Dan McGuire’s visual analytics company has gone from strength to strength. Formed out of a frustration at a lack of usable data in the industry, the award-winning entrepreneur and 2008 Young Gun sought to turn complex intelligence data into clear and specific data insights to help businesses increase their revenue streams. Securing £1.1m backing from angel investors in October last year, the company has affirmed its position as the premier provider of recruitment analytics in the UK with over 60 clients now using its services. The business is currently in the process of rolling out a number of new small analytics apps and has a series of growth strategies in place, including global expansion, with plans to expand its market presence into new territories such as Singapore and Australia over the next year. 

Founders: Simon Swan and Sara Jones
Founded: November 2010 (launched February 2011)
Website: www.hiring-hub.com

Hiring-Hub allows employers to ‘crowdsource’ vacancies from recruitment agencies signed up to the site and set a fee they are comfortable with – allowing employers to avoid the difficulty of selecting the right recruitment agency and introducing a competitive element amongst recruiters. The promising company made our list in 2012 and has continued to grow in popularity amongst both agencies and employers; 600 agencies are now signed up and household names such as Fujifilm, Dyson and Gocompare.com are amongst the 1,000 employers using the site. The business recently secured private equity funding in excess of £500,000 in order to fund aggressive growth and since securing the investment the business has grown 260% in the first three months of 2013, hired seven additional staff, and is well on target to hit its £1.4m revenue target this year.

Founders: Nitzan Yudan and Tomer Kalish
Founded: June 2010 (launched November 2010)
Website: http://flat-club.com/ 

Students at top universities are often away from expensive accommodation for weeks at a time, but many experience difficulty finding trusted tenants to take their rooms on a short-term basis. By connecting students from top universities only with tenants from their existing social, academic and professional networks, Flat-Club, listed in the Startups 100 2012, aims to eliminate the risks involved when advertising on the open market, whilst also keeping user acquisition costs down for the company. And it looks like students are buying into the concept; research by UCL found that 20% of the site’s target demographic will use the Flat-Club service to rent out their apartment for short stays compared to just 10% on the open market. Since the site was launched with £30,000 of savings by Nitzan Yudan and Tomer Kalish in 2010, its focus has been on expanding its network and concluding partnerships with 50 top universities around the globe including UCL, London Business School and NYU. Over the next year Flat-Club plans to replicate its model in Europe, with imminent launches in Paris, Berlin, New York and Madrid. 

Founders: Grant Fraser and Iain Wilcox
Founded: April 2010
Website: www.digitonic.co.uk

With over 25 major clients in both the UK and Europe including Gala Coral, Rank Interactive, Betfair and Blockbuster, Digitonic is not your average marketing agency. The Glasgow-based business specialises in SMS marketing and has invented its own in-house concept, Rich Media Text, to send ‘touchable’ experiences via SMS on iPhone and Android. This means users are able to swipe, wipe, shake and tap in order to engage with advertising content. With both founders possessing an extensive background in marketing, Digitonic was created to combine their expertise with existing mobile technology to break into a market which they felt was previously unexplored. Achieving £1m turnover in 2012 and set to double its revenue this year, the company, which began from a mere £4,000, is making waves in the digital arena. 

Founders: Martin Freeman and Rebecca Kench
Founded: July 2011
Website: www.properteco.co.uk

Previous Startups Awards ‘Trades Business of the Year’ PropertECO landed itself a huge contract within its first weeks of existence – a testament perhaps to the importance of finding a niche in a competitive market. The company specialises in making buildings healthier and more sustainable, but has built a reputation on its focus on reducing radon levels to improve indoor air quality. The naturally occurring radioactive gas can accumulate inside buildings and long-term exposure can lead to lung cancer; yet very few existing companies offered radon testing or knew how to reduce it. Over 20 years in the field meant co-founder Martin Freeman was ideally placed to fill this gap, and since winning that initial tender early on in its life, the company has seen significant demand for its consultancy and contracting work. If that wasn’t enough, Freeman and co-founder Rebecca Kench are also working to bring their own radon monitoring equipment to market.

Founders: Pablo Graiver, Jessica Mann and Eithan Ephratim
Founded: January 2009 (launched Feb 2010)
Website: www.trialreach.com

Entrepreneurial opportunity often exists in making connections: in the case of TrialReach, these connections are between those conducting clinical trials and the patients that could be interested in them. The pharmaceutical industry has traditionally found it a problem to find suitable patients for clinical trials, an issue the three TrialReach founders felt they could address. Using their combined experience in pharmaceuticals and entrepreneurialism, they have built a platform that enables clinicians to connect with patients (who can use the service for free) who want to take part in trials. Pharmaceutical companies and research organisations that have signed up as clients include Novartis, Roche, AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Nestle, and Parexel with whom TrialReach is working on multiple projects across 25 countries. Ambitions for TrialReach are large, and will be assisted by a recent £2m funding round.

Founders: Jamie Ward, Mike Blake and Neil Harmsworth
Founded: September 2011
Website: www.payasugym.com

Featured in last year’s Startups 100, PayasUGym’s unique proposition continues to excite gyms and customers alike. Over 1,100 gyms have now signed up to its service (triple the figures of last year), which offers customers discounted day passes and short-term memberships to allow them to fit their fitness routines around their lifestyle. With 14 million searches carried out on the PayasUGym site over the past 12 months and more than 100,000 registered users, it is proving a hit with gym-goers too. As the only company offering such a service, PayAsUGym still has enormous potential for growth in a rapidly changing market; a fact that has not gone unnoticed by investors who have backed the company with more than £2m to date. The company hopes to reach 2,000 gyms signed up to the service over the next year and plans to launch soon in an as-yet unnamed second country.