How to build at £350m turnover business - Nick Glynne, Buy it Group

Leeds Business Podcast

This week we speak to Nick Glynne, Founder & CEO of the BuyIt Direct Group..

Nick tells us how he went from a single Huddersfield laptop repair shop to a £350m turnover business by buying and fixing distressed businesses. He shares with us how the learnings from two failed business acquisitions moulded the company’s strategy, the pros and cons of taking private equity and explains the difficulties caused by making too much profit. And what’s the difference between equity and profit?

INTRODUCING NICK GLYNNE

Nick Glynne is the CEO and Founder of Buy It Direct Group. Starting from a single computer repair shop in Huddersfield, the Buy it Direct Group is now a collection of product-based companies including one of the UK's largest independent online retailers.

With 1,750 staff, £350m revenue, 1.5 million sq ft of warehousing across five UK sites, two showrooms, and a delivery network, the online business continues to rapidly expand.

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

[00:00:00] The start and early growth of Buyit Direct Group

[00:06:30] Learnings from growth by acquisition

[00:15:30] The acquisitions that didn’t work and learnings

[00:21:00] How to fund acquisitions

[00:24:00] Market sectors for Buyit and the company size

[00:28:00] The ups and downs of Covid

[00:38:30] No to Private Equity

[00:40:00] Equity versus Profit

[00:43:30] How to take investment in your business

[00.48:00] Time to exit?

3 KEY TAKEAWAYS & BUSINESS LEARNINGS

• Don’t over-extend yourself from a risk point of view

• Some times you have to sacrifice perfection to get things done

• Recession makes you infinitely better as a business owner

3 BEST MOMENTS

“Is there more value in buying something than growing organically?”

“One plus one doesn’t always equal 3 when acquiring another business”

“The danger of Covid was that we were making tons of money”

“Only one person owns the strategy, and that’s you the business owner”

VALUABLE RESOURCES FOR YOU

Website: www.leedsbusinesspodcast.com

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/leeds-business-podcast/

Website: https://www.buyitdirectgroup.co.uk/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickglynne/

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ABOUT YOUR HOST

Phil Fraser went from an accidental kitchen table start up, with no investment, all the way to multi-million pound sale to a PLC 18 years later. He’s travelled the full SME business journey of launch, growth, scale and exit.

As well as hosting the Leeds Business Podcast, Phil now works with ambitious SME-owners as a Business Sounding Board (think somewhere between Business Coach and Business Mentor). In simple terms, he’s ‘a pair of ears and an extra pair eyes’ for SME Owners helping them to be better at what they do. Phil’s mantra is It doesn’t need to be ‘lonely at the top’. He helps Business Owners to be better business owners, by helping with their clarity and focus.

As a Business Sounding Board, he gives SME Owners the time & space to regularly discuss their challenges and opportunities, with no sense of judgement or bias, and in complete confidence. This allows them to explore their options in full, culminating with a list of issues to address/clarify, a clear target in mind, a roadmap to success, and a renewed enthusiasm and confidence for the challenges ahead.

Phil has appeared as a guest on over 60 podcasts, webinars and interviews, from around the whole globe, talking on a variety of business subjects. You can view them all at https://philfraser.co.uk/watch-hear-phil/.

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