Laptop Station
With the support of Let’s Do Business Finance and a £50,000 loan through the Recovery Loan Scheme, Laptop Station have been able to invest in their business enabling further growth and a wider customer reach.
In an era where a lot of us are working from home and connecting with family and friends online, technology has never been more important. This rise in home working has not only seen demand for servicing and repairs of desktop computers and laptops but has also seen consumers wanting to upgrade their machinery to something more powerful and modern.
Laptop Station which is based inside Eastbourne’s Enterprise Centre has been operating for over 10 years, owned and managed by business partners Brenden West and Liam Cooper.
Offering Sales & Repairs of Laptops, PC’s, Tablets and Mobiles, Laptop Station has built a reputation for offering excellent service at affordable prices. With product prices ranging from £150-£1000, and the USP of custom upgrade options, they have been able to achieve year on year growth of the business, by providing their customers excellent value for money.
“There wasn’t anyone doing good quality refurbished laptops to a consumer market” Brenden told us. “It seemed like an excellent way to provide an affordable product, and something different to the mainstream retailers”
Laptop Station first approached Let’s Do Business Finance when they were looking for a £25,000 business financing to expand their shop into another unit within the Centre.
“I’ve never been able to get funding from a mainstream bank. It’s been so frustrating as we had a history of repayments, but they just wouldn’t accept it. Something that has been so refreshing in dealing with Let’s Do Business is that you are dealing with a human being that’s actually talking to you, and listening to you, as well as looking at the figures. They look at the whole picture and not just the piece of paper”
Having repaid this loan, Laptop Station then returned for a growth loan of £50,000 to assist a further shop expansion, and the development of a new website to improve online sales. It was at this time that the pandemic slowed its growth plans, as the focus turned to providing technical support and improving the website to widen its target market.
In July 2021, Laptop Station contacted Let’s Do Business Finance to enquire about the Recovery Loan Scheme. The Recovery Loan Scheme (RLS) is a government backed business loan scheme from British Business Bank that supports access to finance for UK businesses as they recover and grow following the Covid-19 pandemic. Providing loans of up to £10million over a maximum of 6 years, loans can be used for a wide range of purposes including managing cash flow, investment and growth.
Laptop Station were looking for a loan of £50k, to repay their existing finance and to invest in improving the SEO of their website. Having invested a lot into Google AdWords, they now wanted to improve their organic positioning to lower their ad spend going forward.
As an accredited providers of the RLS scheme on behalf of British Business Bank, Let’s Do Business Finance were able to assist Laptop Station with their loan, assisting them to put in place a 12 month plan to increase their websites organic growth.
When asked about his experience dealing with Let’s Do Business Finance and Business Manager Lisa Young, Brendan commented; “Lisa has been amazing! She was really understanding and genuinely interested in what we were doing. She really took the time to listen to us, and nothing ever seemed too much to ask. I would and have recommended Let’s Do Business Finance to others”
Now set to turnover over a million pounds in 2021, Brenden has his mind set on the next steps for the business, adapting his original plan of opening a chain of stores, to now focussing on the online operation.
“I enjoyed dealing with and getting to know Brendan and Liam, it was clear from the outset that they are passionate about the business and have a clear vision of how they see the business moving forward.”