Top tech companies of the North, as selected by GP Bullhound and TechNorth, and celebrated at NorthernTechAwards run by GP Bullhound, and founded by Manoj Ranaweera and Techcelerate in 2011
<p>NORTHERN TECH 100
T H E N O R T H ’ S F A S T E S T G R O W I N G T E C H C O M P A N I E S
That was back in 2014. Within weeks
of starting out in the store cupboard,
developing a test and trial proposition
with the company’s now tech director
James Branton, and switching on their
pay-per-click advertising,
the
leads
started rolling in.
He quickly realised that convenience
was going to be their USP and set about
capitalising on it. “We looked at how
convenient the selling process was for
sellers at that time and decided we
could take that to a new level. Rather
than getting customers to drive their car
hundreds of miles, we could collect it from
their doorstep. Rather than make them
wait three days for payment, we’d pay
them immediately with an online transfer.”
Of course, an easy sale might sacrifice
some of the money you could make but
that's just part of the business, Marley
says. “That’s the market we operate in.
It’s not about getting the highest sale
price possible for your car, but it’s more
convenient through us, and everybody
knows that – we all know where we stand
in the market.”
The thing that powers all this for the end
user is the tech the Car Buying Group has
developed. Getting that right was their
number one priority before going live with
the online platform. “Our biggest asset,
our IP if you like, is the valuations engine
we’ve developed. It’s a living, breathing
organism, constantly interrogating data,
pricing and what we’re buying.”
Continued on page 3...
The Car Buying Group
might be one of the
youngest companies
on the Northern Tech
100 league table, but
it’s also the fastest
growing.
VICKI SHIEL
A store cupboard in Bradford surrounded
by toilet rolls might not seem like a fitting
environment for a promising young
startup. But that’s where The Car Buying
Group began operating in 2014.
“It really was a startup story,” says
managing director Tom Marley.
“I
remortgaged my house, my parents
remortgaged theirs — the lot.”
The
idea came