Premium Mobile Distribution Ltd -Tony Ianniello
Mentor: Stephen Park Brown
Premium Mobile Distribution producing own brand mobile phone and computer accessories which are sold in supermarkets and anywhere with an eye for fashion. If you want an England World Cup i-phone wallet (he acknowledges there may be a few remainders) or a SpongeBob camera case he can help. There are also a whole range of quality bags and cases for the fashion and technology conscious.
Tony is the Managing Director of Premium Mobile Distribution and learnt about the Business Mentoring program on a seminar and was matched up with Stephen Park Brown. A year on Tony has tripled his turnover in one of the worst recessions on record. Growth has been 85% in the last year. In the next twelve months he’s expecting 250% increase in turnover. “Last year we broke even. This year we’ll have net profits of 10% - of £3.2m.”
Essentially Tony was looking for someone with experience of a start up level business; “we were concerned with all the problems associated with starting a company up from scratch”. Tony maintains that he now has a lot more confidence and expertise and now is “disciplined to looking at the business from top down rather than always looking at it from the bottom.” This switch from concentration on detail to seeing the big picture has been important to strategic development.
Stephen maintained that the “challenge is the gelling of relationship between mentor and mentee, something which he and Tony managed with ease; “Tony and I still talk regularly and he bounces things off me and I would not hesitate to bounce things off him too.”
Tony says the biggest challenge today is getting next round funding. He’s not shy about equity dilution – because the exponential growth will more than pay for that. Export is the route ahead. Italy and France are working well for him. He’s making inroads in Austria, Germany and Eastern Europe. Asia and the USA are his big current targets.
“When someone tells you it’s a free service. The temptation is to think it has low value. You couldn’t be more wrong. Why wouldn’t you want to call on such a valuable service and use it to the full?” Eighteen months on Premier Mobile Distribution are still reaping the dividends.
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