Expansion

Stealing a lead

Oct 06 issue

Half price fuel

Name: Ingram Legge, owner-manager
Company: Green Fuel, turnover of £2 million, founded in 2003, based in Bath
Profile: A self-confessed petrolhead, Legge’s original ambition lay on the racetrack in touring cars, but he then became an accountant and took an MBA at Bath. There he met Noel Lock, an environmentalist, who became his business partner.

‘Help customers go green and save money’

‘Climate change is increasingly having a commercial impact, but people only really started to get interested in converting their cars to LPG (liquefied petroleum gas) to lower their emissions when they realised they might be exempt from the congestion charge in London. At the time, it was hard to work out whether you could install LPG on your particular model and then find someone to do a proper conversion. The whole market was a bit unprofessional. So, we set ourselves up to give an instant quote on switching to dual fuel on all 50,000 of the car models produced for the UK market in the last ten years.
To date, we have carried out about 2,000 conversions through our network of installers. Typically, it should cost you about £1,650 (ex VAT) for a family saloon like a Ford Mondeo. But your fuel costs should drop from £10 to £5 per hundred miles – and you can cut your total level of emissions by 20 per cent. The motor trade has always been a bit sceptical about the quality of conversions, but we are starting to win them round. Volvo are recommending us and we are the only installer listed by Lex Leasing. The future looks very promising for us.’

Cheap and cheerful IP protection

Name: Margaret Briffa, 45, managing partner
Company: Briffa & Co, founded in 1996, based in Islington, London, with fees revenue of £1.5 million
Profile: After working on corporate accounts at mega law firms, she saw how smaller creative companies were missing out on gaining value from their intellectual property. So she set up her own IP practice to offer a more straightforward service for people working in creative ventures.

‘Provide a clever solution to a perennial problem’

‘It can be frightening for SMEs when their IP rights are infringed. Even spending £500 to send a lawyer’s letter can be overwhelming. So, there’s no way most of those businesses are going to take action against a corporate which they know has the resources to carry on regardless.
As an SME, you could take out your own insurance on IP infringements, but it’s probably going to cost you thousands. So I thought why not see if we could find some cheap and cheerful group cover.
Through a broker, we now offer two £150 policies on trademarks and designs covering costs up to £25,000. As far as I know, we’re the only ones offering anything like this. We have 130 people on the scheme and one of my colleagues has just won damages for £75,000 at a cost of £2,000.’