Bidding to build £20m empire

Aug 3 2007 by Andrew Mernin, The Journal

Andrew Mernin sat down with 36-year-old George Kinghorn to talk trade, touch-screens and toffee.

When you were younger did you show early signs that you would one day become a successful entrepreneur?

At school I was really bad academicly and the only thing I liked was business studies. I really couldn’t be bothered with anything else. One day at school we made toffee and two of my mates suggested selling it. I organised everything while they did all the production and by the time I was in fifth year we were making around £400 profit a week. I probably had more disposable income then as I did at any other time. One of the biggest profit makers was when I bought ice lolly moulds and made toffee lollies. My step-dad was a chef and had a creme brulee torch. I used it to melt the end of the lolly, added hundred-and-thousands and sold them for four times as much as the loose toffee.

Studentphones was a huge success. How big did the company actually become?

Someone in the press once said that if we were to float we would be valued at around £100m. We were selling around three or four thousand phones a month.

Your next venture was Touchbase. How did the idea come about?

It started around the year 2000 at a time when the internet still wasn’t very big. I thought there must be money to be made from people that weren’t internet friendly. I looked at touch screens and thought it would be a good idea [to put them in public places]. I had a friend who worked in Greggs the bakers who set up a meeting with the head of their cafe chain, Bakers Oven. I asked them if we could put the kit into their cafes and take the advertising revenue and they agreed. Baker’s Oven was already thinking of doing its own in house magazine so we said we could do it electronically.

The company eventually went into liquidation. What went wrong with the business?

We had agreed to set up in 250 stores nationwide so the advertisers were excited. It was a tense, sticky time when we started raising money because it was a time when people didn’t want to invest in technology start-ups as so many people had had their fingers burnt. We struggled and struggled until eventually we had run up between £750,000 and £1m debt which we tried to pay off by selling the kiosks. We got the debt down to half a million. My wife said at the time that I was close to having a nervous breakdown.

Where did the idea for your latest venture, Bayagent, come from?

I was looking for household things to buy and sell on ebay for some extra cash. Then I found out about ‘drop shops’ in America where people drop their stuff off to be sold on ebay.

What does ebay think of online trading companies like Bayagent?

They’re interested in what we are doing and we actually have a direct line with them and are always exploring different opportunities. There’s actually a program on ebay called trading assistance specifically designed to encourage people to buy and sell on other people’s behalf.

What’s the strangest thing you’ve been asked to sell?

There was one woman who wanted us to sell 30 ‘kitty sitters’ which are toilet seats for cats. When we first got them we thought they were never going to sell. They proved really popular and we sold them all within five or six days and we still get requests for them. They fit on to the toilet with a small hole in the middle. I suppose they’re more hygienic than kitty litters.

How do you protect yourself against counterfeit or stolen goods?

If they're a limited company we do credit and background checks and if they’re a householder we take a copy of their driving license and their address. You can always tell if people are a bit shifty. If it sounds too good to be true then we contact the police straight away.

As an entrepreneur have you planned getting involved in any other sectors?

No, not at the moment. I learned a long time ago that trying to do more than one thing at a time doesn't work.