Piling high and selling cheap paid off for Poundland entrepreneur Steve Smith – and now he wants to apply the same methods to selling homes.
Smith earned £50 million from his stake in Poundland, starting from a single store in Burton-on-Trent, Derbyshire.
He left the business in 2002, but Poundland has gained in strength and just joined the stock market valued at £750 million.
Smith’s latest venture is EstatesDirect.com.
The company offers a flat-rate fee to sell homes online and has already chalked up 450 sales.
Smith has taken the proposal to crowdfunders and raised £500,000 from almost 200 backers for a 10% equity share in the business – which values EstatesDirect.com at £5 million.
Exorbitant fees charged by estate agents
The cash will fund a national roll-out of EstatesDirect.com.
“I want EstatesDirect.com the UK’s largest personal estate agency network,” said Smith.
“The market is huge but is dominated by high street agents charging exorbitant fees. I want to bridge the gap between online and the high street to make the process easier and cheaper for sellers.”
Around 850,000 homes a year are sold in the UK, and most sales are handled by estate agents.
Meanwhile, another innovative start-up has raised £12.6 million funding for SumUp, a technology business that has developed a card reader attachment for mobile phones to let small businesses collect debit and credit card payments without the expense of joining bank networks.
The money came from venture capitalists and individual investors.
Free credit card app for businesses
SumUp offers businesses a free reader for swiping cards via a smartphone headphone jack and an app that switches the phone into till mode for accepting card payments anywhere the user can pick up a signal.
The company makes money by taking a 2.75% charge for every transaction passing through the SumUp system.
The app and reader have already passed a four-month trial across Britain, Ireland, Germany and Austria.
The company hopes that around 1.5 million small businesses will take up the idea.
Chief executive Daniel Klein said: “Small traders have told us the app and service plugs a hole in the market for small businesses who find dealing with card services with banks too expensive.
“Smartphone use is gaining across Europe, and our market will grow with it. We already employ more than 100 people and this new funding will let us expand the business into new areas during the coming months.”
Please tell Steve Smith to come and do this in Queensland Australia as they sting its over here for everything he would be a billionaire over here with people that would use him .