If you haven’t visited the online fashion group Boohoo.com yet, you are probably the only one. That’s because they are set to grow by as much as 50% this year, with a plan to hit turnover of £1billion by 2020. Sales this year in January and February were £295million with profits at £31million. Many assume some of their recent acquisitions will help with even more growth. Their newer brands include Pretty Little Thing which has ‘triple-digit growth’ and Nasty Gal.
With the rising costs of homes these days, many people are thinking of creative ways to purchase something they can call their own. We all know about the tiny house movement. Now, people are also considering buying a boat as a home. Boat numbers have risen significantly in the last few years. There are about 28,000 boats being used either as a main or second home on the canals and rivers in the UK. The demand keeps growing and the number of boats in the capital has increased by more than 50% since 2012.
Boats can cost from £5,000 for a small boat to much more than £100,000 for the most upscale.
Interestingly, if you’re looking for a loan to buy that boat, you can check out Shawbrook Bank which lends against narrowboats, Dutch barges, wide-beam canal boats and motorboats. All boat users have to have a British Waterways Licence and a fee which depends on the size of the boat.
It’s important to find out about businesses that are developing in the UK and doing well. Nested is one of them. This is an online estate buyer that will guarantee to sell your house within 90 days for a minimum of 98% of the value. The amazing part of the company is that if they fail to sell the property in three months, or for the price you’ve agreed upon, they will give you the cash so that you can then continue to purchase your next house.
The firm has only launched six months ago by Matt Robinson. The idea came to him in this way. As he said,
“…cash buyers are often able to pay less than chain buyers because they are in a position to proceed quickly. As a result it is almost impossible to secure your dream home if you need to sell in order to buy. I saw this first hand when I was buying my own first home and it just felt unfair. I asked myself what you could do to get round this and realised there is almost nothing you can do. That’s why we created Nested – to level the playing field and put chain buyers in the same position as cash buyers.”
As Robinson described the process, he said, “We take just under a third of anything we get over the guaranteed sale price – so most of it is going straight to the home seller.
It’s a fair way for us and the home owner to share in both the upside and downside and aligns our interests. If we don’t sell the property within the agreed time frame, we give the home seller an interest-free cash loan to purchase their next property so they don’t lose out and it doesn’t cost them extra.”
The Nested coast is a 2.5% fee and Nested’s 30% share of anything that is achieved over the guaranteed price.
You never know what will make it big on the market. And often it’s persistence and a belief in yourself that makes the difference. Tangle Teezer is a hairproduct created by former hairdresser Shaun Pulfrey. He was turned down by the Dragons’ Den, where they called his product “hair-brained” and a “waste of time.” But this waste of time product exports to 80 countries from its UK base and has also launched another product called The Ultimate.
As the sole shareholder of his company, Pulfrey is doing just fine as sales soared to £28.6 million in the year that ended on March 31, 2016. Learn more about this British company and the piece of the market they are snapping up.
Most of us have probably never thought about where the Queen buys her clothes or her undergarments. But she certainly does and it’s fascinating to learn about the person who is in charge of this task. The woman who fits the Queen for her undergarments is June Kenton.
Having left school at the age of 16, she started working in her parents’ retail business. They sold ladieswear, blouses, skirts and underwear. When she first went out on her own, she owned a ladieswear shop in the Brixton market arcade in South-West London with her husband.
She bought Rigby & Peller for £20,000 when it was losing money. When she wanted to buy it, she had to go to the Queen and see that she approved since it included the Royal Warrant. She was given permission and she has held the Royal Warrant since 1982 and her official title today is that she is corsetiere to Her Majesty the Queen.
In 1993, she got the warrant as well for the Queen Mother. In 2011, she sold Rigby & Peller for £8 million. She’s been busy most recently with Storm In A D Cup, her autobiography that will be published soon.
Former UK Ambassador Daniel Taub had a unique opportunity recently to interview Lord Rothschild at Waddeston Manor in Buckinghamshire. Together, they discussed the Balfour Declaration that helped to pave the way for the State of Israel, and Lord Rathschild’s family’s part in its creation. The interview was part of the Balfour 100 project and Daniel Taub and Lord Rothschild had a very interesting discourse. Here, you’ll see the full video and learn what Lord Rothschild had to say about these events from so long ago.
This very interesting article shows you the average annual salaries for many jobs in the UK. Farmers apparently increased their salaries in 2016 by more than anyone else according to an annual survey. They took home 21.2% more pay than they did in 2015 although their annual wage is still quite low at £26,798.
The average pay for all employees was found to be £28,296, and was an increase of 2.7%.
Who else raised their pay? Care assistants raised their pay by 18.7% to £8,362 while hairdressers were up 16.6%, air travel assistants were up 20.1% and typists were up 10.7%. Barristers and judges also saw increases of as much as 18.6%.
A total of 21.9 million jobs were recorded in the numbers. What were the two poorest paid jobs? Care escorts and playworkers. Who earned the closest to the overall mean? Physiotherapists; moulders and die casters; and plumbers and heating engineers. Authors and translators were also in this area.
Maxore, under Sohrab Vakil’s leadership, invests in the commercial development, construction, ownership and operation of facilities that take hydrocarbons of lower value and transform them into products that have often in the past been manufactured from crude oil. The company’s goal is to build facilities which can meet the world’s need for new sources of energy without the need to rely heavily on crude oil. Among Maxore’s petroleum and petrochemical products are high quality gasoline. Sohrab Vakil’s relationship with refineries in the USA, Europe and the Far East means he can use his partner’s blending facilities to supply products which comply with all local standards and regulations. Other products supplied under Vakil’s leadership are gasoil; fuel oil; bitumen; and urea (fertilizers).The bottom line is that there is no substitute for knowing an industry inside and out. Sohrab Vakil leads Maxore through regulatory challenges, disruptive technologies and other market forces that can adversely effect the investor’s bottom line with expertise and a rare understanding of the industry.
Rob and Paul Forkan certainly couldn’t have predicted where their lives would take them. In 2004, they were on a family trip in Sri Lanka when their parents, Kevin (54) and Sandra (40) died while saving their younger siblings from a tsunami. Rob was 17 at the time, while Paul was 15 and they wanted to help others to rebuild their lives as they had.
They started making flip flops out of their home and used some of their profits to open a children’s home. In 2012, they founded Gandys clothing and accessories and then in 2014 they set up their first Orphans for Orphans children’s home in Matugama, Sri Lanka. Last year they opened shops in London, Cornwall and Tunbridge Wells and they have plans for two more stores in 2017.
While real estate prices are definitely skyrocketing in the UK, there are still some places where you can get a property that doesn’t completely break the bank. In a recent article on the Daily News, they featured five properties in locations where you can still find something for £50,000. That’s a fourth of the cost of the average house in England.
While some of these houses need to be fixed up, they can actually be purchased with as little as £2,500 with a 95% mortgage.
If you haven’t visited the online fashion group Boohoo.com yet, you are probably the only one. That’s because they are set to grow by as much as 50% this year, with a plan to hit turnover of £1billion by 2020. Sales this year in January and February were £295million with profits at £31million. Many assume some of their recent acquisitions will help with even more growth. Their newer brands include Pretty Little Thing which has ‘triple-digit growth’ and Nasty Gal.
