Yourgolftravel.com was set up by Ross Marshall, 27, and his friend, Andrew Harding, 28, after they decided to turn their passion for the sport into a business.
April 2005
Andrew and I met at Durham University. He then worked for Deloitte, I joined ING Barings. But Andrew left to help set up the London Golf Show and I got bored with banking.
We’re keen golfers — he plays off a handicap of four, mine is 14 — and were frustrated with the offering for golf travel on the internet, so set up an online golf travel agency, Yourgolftravel.com, financing the business with two credit cards “maxed out” to their £10,000 limits. It was incredibly tough at first. We worked our contacts and asked 300 to 400 UK hotels if they wanted to do golf packages through us. Only three replied, but we signed them up. At The Open, in St Andrews, we gave out 2,000 to 3,000 leaflets over the four days. It was a lot of toil.
A major success: Ross Marshall
August 2005
We’d started the business in Andrew’s bedroom, but moved to a small, unpleasant office in Wimbledon. It cost just £50 a week, and we had only two phones and two computers. We met clients in Starbucks and used the office to call as many local businesses as possible.
January 2006
We moved to bigger premises in St John’s Street, Clerkenwell, and received a £250,000 loan for expansion. Later that year, we did a lot of business at the Ryder Cup at the K Club in Ireland, seeing about 300 clients. In 2006, we achieved turnover of £1.1m.
May 2008
We moved to Clerkenwell Green. We now have 51 staff, close to 90,000 clients and represent 1,200 golf courses and hotels, offering golf holidays in 26 countries including Thailand, Mauritius and the Caribbean. Turnover trebled to £3.3m in 2007 and then doubled to £8.1m in 2008. This year, we’re projecting turnover of £15m.
