DRIVING SUCCESS: IW LOTTERY HELPS BUMP EXPRESS AND CNC COATINGS TO GROW WITH MAJOR LOAN
Island businessman John Nightingale has been able to invest £35,000 in to his business, buying new state-of-the-art technology, thanks to the support of the Isle of Wight Lottery. John is a director of Bump Express and CNC Coatings, based at Lake Industrial Way, where his team provide professional repairs to car body work scratches and scuffs as well as alloy wheel refurbishment, leather refurbishment and aqua blasting.
“Our new machinery will transform our business,” John explains. “The amount of work we can do has more than doubled because our processing times are now much faster. Our core business is powder coating wheels and we can now process up to three complete sets of wheels a day whereas before we’d struggle to do maybe one and a half. Having a sliding hook mechanism means we’re also having to lift the wheels a lot less, which means we can work much faster. Our new, bigger oven will also open up other markets for marine engineering and prototyping.”
John applied to the Isle of Wight Lottery to borrow £35,000, which is the largest amount of money that the loan panel has ever approved.
“Borrowing the money was actually really easy,” John says. “I knew what I wanted to do. I know our market and I knew how I wanted to grow the business by investing in machinery. We did all of our number crunching and I put it all into our bid. The loan panel were very complimentary about our plan and they approved the £35,000 interest free loan in just 10 minutes.”
John works with his colleague Mark but he’s getting ready to create a new position to help him deal with the increased workload.
“I would urge any business looking to grow to look at the IW Lottery,” John says. “I’d looked at leasing the equipment or going for a bank loan but the IW Lottery was able to lend us all of the money that we needed, at 0% interest. The terms have been very flexible and we’re paying the £35,000 back over three years, if not sooner. Having the money upfront before we bought the machinery also put us in a strong position to negotiate and get exactly what we needed, delivered very quickly. I’m massively excited about the future of the business and we couldn’t have done this without the IW Lottery.”
The IW Chamber’s Chief Executive Steven Holbrook visited John at his workshop in Lake to see the new machinery in action.
“Bump Express and CNC Coating’s loan is another great example of an established business that has been able to continue to grow with the help of an interest free loan,” Steven says. “The Isle of Wight Lottery is there for businesses of any size, and it isn’t just for start-ups. The lottery’s interest free support is unique and if your business wants to grow, or needs investment to create or sustain jobs, then talk to us.”
Since its inception in 2001 the Isle of Wight Lottery has helped create thousands of local jobs by giving financial support to growing businesses. Whether your business is a new start up or an established business looking to move to the next level, you could get even bigger with the support of the Isle of Wight Lottery.
