Success for solar panel business
An entrepreneur is on target for a £5m turnover just over a year after starting his green business.
Wayne Morris started The Big Green Company - which installs residential solar energy systems - on 1 April 2010 - to take advantage of Government policy to encourage more solar panels in the home.
The policy - a feed in tariff which buys back excess generation from the householder - is designed to offset the cost of investing in the technology and gives homeowners a tax-free reward.
Morris started off with a single site at Wilmslow Garden Centre and also has two other sites in Carlisle and Edinburgh. The company has 54 staff and operates from what Morris calls ‘solar hubs’ where customers can visit and see full working displays of solar electricity panels and solar hot water panels.
He says: “When the Government introduced the feed in tariff most customers had never really seen solar panels or how they worked, so i felt the best thing for our business was if we could be the main provider from an educational point of view - so that customers can come along to the solar hubs and see how it all works and see if solar energy is actually of interest to them.
“All these sites are staffed and customers have a lot more confidence when they can see the company physically there, as opposed to say an internet site.”
According to Morris 99% of his customers are people who are retired, have got the money to put into solar, and can see that energy prices are increasing.
Whilst the company has been very successful so far - posting a turnover of £1.1m in the first 12 months - Morris makes it clear it wasn’t an easy journey. In fact it took 9 months for him to get his first sale - a moment he says made him ‘nearly fall off my chair’.
He says: “You are earning no income and people are asking how your business is going and you can’t lie and say you are doing great when you haven’t even done one sale. There are times you think is this ever going to happen but it’s true in business what they say- don’t give up.
“Once we knew the concept of these solar hubs was right then obviously it is like most things in life in that it takes a lot of hard work, effort and sweat to get if off the ground.
“After that first sale we had about five or six sales after four weeks, and i thought this is it, we have done it, and as each month went on it was how big can this go?”
Morris’ background is in pharmaceuticals which he was involved in for 13/14 years, where he progressed up the career ladder as medical rep and regional manager. Although he was successful he always felt he wanted to run his own business. So he left his sales manager job in 2007 and set up his first company doing consultancy work for pharmaceutical companies. It was quite successful until it lost a big contract with a drug company which Morris says, ‘sort of wiped out the business.’
Afterwards he spent a year ‘doing nothing but going to Costa Coffee thinking what am i going to do.’
“I didn’t want to go back into pharmaceuticals but i had no idea what i wanted to do just that i wanted to build a big company.“
He continues:
“I had a chance meeting with a fellow entrepreneur who said ‘this sort of green thing looks promising’ so i looked at that and solar panels looked the most promising within the green industry.”
He says he was willing to look at any industry: “It's great with solar because there is a green issue to it and we are doing a good thing for the planet, but initially it was how can i get any business off the ground. I just wanted to run a successful company.”
So what is next for The Big Green Company?
By the end of the year the business will have a solar hub in the south and according to Morris will be ‘the first genuine national company with an infrastructure that can not only install but where customers can come along and see the operations.’
There are also plans to look at other products in the green energy market connected to solar panels.
Morris believes the business will continue its success hitting £20m revenues next year.
