WHEN Bruce Bratley started up his rubbish and recycling collection service he
decided to publicise it by sending out a fax to 20,000 potential customers,
a move that cost him £1,000. He received two replies – both asking him not
to fax them again.
Fortunately for Bratley, the exercise was a rare mistake and only three years
after starting up, his company, First Mile, is growing fast despite the
down-turn and is on target to have a turnover of £4m this year.
Bratley learnt the value of hard work from a young age. Brought up on a dairy
farm in North Yorkshire, he had to get up early every morning to feed the
cows and horses before going to school.
On leaving school at 18 he went to Edinburgh University to study geography and
then to Surrey University to do a PhD in environmental sciences. While
studying the waste industry at Surrey he had kept an eye on a start-up firm
he knew would benefit from a forthcoming piece of European legislation,
which stated that firms which provided packaging had a responsibility to
recycle it.
“I phoned them up and said you need to employ me, I am very good and I can
help you grow the business,” he said. Bratley, by then 27, was given the
role of commercial director and the company went from nothing to a turnover
of £30m in the space of 18 months. After four years he left to set up a
consultancy advising waste businesses on their strategy.
He was convinced there was a gap in the market for a recycling company that
could use internet-based technology to deliver good customer service. “My
idea was to service customers who found it expensive and difficult to get
rid of their waste and which they couldn’t easily recycle,” he said.
Bratley’s original plan was to buy an existing business with a turnover of
about £1m that he could use as a springboard for his own ideas. He found one
and even managed to raise £1m from venture capitalists, but the deal fell
through.
So Bratley decided he might as well start up his own business from scratch. He
invited a business partner, Aidan Paul, to join him and the two put in
£20,000 each from savings, using some of the money to buy a lorry. Bratley
decided to target potential business customers in central London.
Under his business model, customers buy prepaid sacks which they then fill
with waste and recycling and leave on the street for First Mile to collect
at a prearranged time. The firm then takes the waste to depots to be dealt
with. Bratley called the business First Mile because his firm carries out
the first mile of the recycling journey.
However, for Bratley the key element that would make his business stand out
from its competitors was its use of web-based technology, creating a
seamless, paperless payment system you could access via the internet.
Customers log on to their account online and all transactions are automated,
with payments collected by direct debit, thus removing the cost of paper
invoices.
He said: “We can process thousands of transactions at ultra-low cost without
any paper and customers get total transparency about what their costs are.
We just rip through the business with efficiencies and hand them on to the
clients.” Bratley claims he is able to save customers up to 35% on their
waste and recycling bills.
He also realised, however, that customers wanted to be able to talk to
someone, so all bookings are taken over the phone.
“That was a very conscious decision because people are very nervous about
waste and recycling because there are so many laws around it,” he said.
“Local authorities have got the equivalent of traffic wardens trudging round
putting £50 fines on bags of waste. From day one we have had an 0800 number
which is answered by a human 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It doesn’t
sound like much but it is rocket science for the waste industry.”
The business has now signed up 5,400 customers and is adding eight to ten new
ones a day. Last year it started up in Bir-mingham, and Bratley eventually
plans to roll out the service nationwide.
Now aged 38 and married with two children, he has this advice for budding
entrepreneurs. “You have to keep making decisions. If you start a business
you are going to be the chief executive and people will look to you for
leadership.
“You might make some bad decisions, but you have got to keep making them. So
many people just stop making decisions and they wonder why their business is
failing.”
He added: “It might seem that it is beyond your reach financially or your
ability to comprehend it, but I think people starting businesses should
always look at technology. And don’t buy something off the shelf unless it
is right. At the moment we have 5,000 customers – but the system we have
built could take 500,000 customers. It is very scalable.”
Bratley thinks the secret of his success has been his burning desire to win.
He said: “I am incredibly competitive. Winning is what pushes me on.”
