Transform Your Images aims to grow

Oct 19 2009 by Karen Dent, The Journal

A BUSINESS that turns photographs into bespoke pieces of art is aiming to double in size in the next five years and boost its turnover to more than £4m by 2010.

Transform Your Images, which was set up by Whitley Bay-born entrepreneur Alex Noble at the start of 2005, is looking to open more than 30 stores in shopping centres around the UK.

He said: “At the moment, we’ve got 14 shops and two RMUs [barrows]. We are basically looking at opening three shops a year over the next five years to double the portfolio.

“The turnover this year, we’re looking at £3.2m to £3.5m. If it’s £3.5m, then next year I expect in excess of £4.1m.”

He is joint managing director of the firm with boyhood friend Andrew Snell, whose family ran a chain of seven art shops. The idea to start Transform Your Images sprang from a previous business where the two linked up.

Mr Noble said: “I was getting people’s photos and getting them painted in the Far East, then I’d taught myself digital art packages and was selling then to Andrew’s father’s shops. I started to sell quite a few of them through the shops.

“The technology came to a price point that it became affordable to print rather than send them to the Far East. I opened the first store and website on my own.

“Andrew had seen the progress and within two weeks he bought into the company and we accelerated down the retail route.

“His retail management experience enabled the concept to be put into shopping centres.

The business grew from its original shop in Whitley Bay to outlets in the Metrocentre and Newcastle’s Eldon Square. There are now branches spread between Edinburgh in the north to Bristol in the south west and Kent in the south east.

The initial three stores were self-funded but investment from Roy Stanley, who founded electric vehicle group Tanfield, and accountant Keith Robinson in 2007 inspired the business to start thinking bigger.

“We went to London to raise fund for a 10-store roll out. Through the money we raised and the profit we made that year, we opened eight new stores,” said Mr Noble, whose first business was buying and selling fruit machines in his early 20s, before moving into computer software, then designer fashion outlets.

“We just had steady progress and have opened two stores this year. The plan for the future is to keep this steady progress. The way the market is at the moment, we don’t want to do a big roll-out.”

Transform Your Images currently employs around 75 people and Mr Noble says the business is coping with the recession.

“We’ve had certain stores in certain areas hit, but where there’s money, the dint’s been very little,” he said.

“We’re riding it out pretty well, we are expanding. We’re not cutting back.”