Mr. Bradley: Xpertise is a leading IT training company, and at this stage in our development, operates primarily in the UK. The existing core business is public scheduled IT technical training ; that’s training for IT professionals in the Northeast, Northwest and the Midlands of England. We are, we believe, the market leader in those regions, but these are the less IT centric regions of the UK s. So nationally we are a relatively small player. We have a 4 million pound annual turnover and our market share is about 1% of the UK market. The customer base is a broad range of companies and organisations in those regions, and one of our strengths, particularly in the current economic climate, is that we are not particularly dependent on any market segment.
TWST: How did this regional presence arise? Was there a clear strategy for staying out of the IT centric areas?
Mr. Bradley: It’s really one of fortuitous growth and goes back to the history of the Company. We were actually originally part of a wider systems business, which started a training division in Altrincham. The business later expanded from there into the Midlands and then about three years ago acquired an operation in Washington – that’s the original Washington in the North-East of England! So it’s a pragmatic entrepreneurial development in the early stages of the company. That’s worked well for us to date, but growing from our strong regional base to be a UK wide business is the one of the first challenges we face in going forward.
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