Shelter Store

Started by two university friends, Shelter Store has taken the world of street furniture online. One of the few niches to remain impervious to the web revolution, it was the norm for schools, councils and the construction industry to buy direct from manufacturers via brochure. The Shelter Store founders broke the mould last year, investing £3,000 in an e-commerce website and spending £1,500 on a Google Adwords campaign to get ShelterStore.com and running. Initially, the site listed just 20 products - today, you can buy everything from playground furniture to bollards on the site. In a first for the industry, customers can now make instant purchases online, while ShelterStore does the leg-work for manufacturers who no longer have to trade direct. In its first eight months trading, Shelter Store has taken £850,000 of sales, generating pre-tax profits of £160,000. The site has quickly established itself as the No.1 one-stop-shop for street furniture, listing the NHS and Transport for London among its customers.

• Slick pure e-commerce operation in an untapped market
• Quickly established itself as the leading provider of street furniture
• Preferred procurement route for public sector