AN ENTREPRENEUR who laboured on a building site after his first business failed has gone on to start a “stress-free” removal company.
Adam Maton, 32, spent eight years working for LV= before quitting to set up his own business.
He said: “One morning, I woke up and decided I didn’t want to live that life any more. I had a house and a car but I wasn’t happy. There was a lack of challenge and I wanted more of a sense of adventure.”
Within six weeks of enrolling on a course to teach English as a foreign language, he was in China teaching around 20 children.
While doing that job, he launched Travel and Earn Recruitment, a business for people wanting to work abroad.
“The travel business was never going to be successful because I didn’t have a plan. I hadn’t worked out who the competition was and wasn’t doing anything different to anyone else,” he said.
“But in China I met other ambitious business people who were also working on ideas for start-ups.
“It gave me confidence to push out and do my own thing.”
He returned to Bournemouth and, as the travel business started failing, he turned to labouring. “I was at the bottom of the food chain – it was really demoralising,” he said. One day a driver arrived at the building site operating a simple “man and van” business and charging more than £200 a day.
Mr Maton was impressed and set up VanMan with his brother Jack.
He said: “I knew I wanted to move into the removals side so I pretended to put my parents’ house on the market and asked several existing removals companies to come around and pitch for the job. It allowed me to see where our market position might be, and identify gaps in the market.”
WeMove launched in the spring of last year with three staff. It now has 10 people working most days from three vans at Store and Secure behind Castlepoint.
Mr Maton said: “We identified that the biggest factor in moving was that it was stressful and so settled on the tag line: ‘Moving is stressful, but moving day doesn’t have to be’.”
Mr Maton said: “A lot of people who fail in business lose money, but I am fortunate in not having done so. Although it has been quite an uneven journey it’s been exciting, and I made sure I learned from it.”
He added: “I simply realised you could do something which is old – but find ways of doing it much better.”
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