Internet grass business shows good margins

by Catherine Woods - Monday, 23rd June 2008 -

When George Mullan isn’t busy creating pitches for major football games, he’s flogging his internet business Artificial-grass.com.

The website is part of the Support in Sport family of companies. Mullan bought Support in Sport, which specialises in the making and installation of sports surfaces and pitches, eight years ago after a career in turnarounds. Support in Sport built the Moscow pitch for this year's Champion’s League final.

Mullan says: “We’ve got about 78 products you can buy on the website. We’re always looking for new areas to move into and we spent quite a bit of money making sure we were top of the Google rankings. It’s a business that’s really taking off. It took us 12 months to get it off the ground but the margins are good and it’s selling directly to the consumer.”

The focus was on Google because Mullan notes it has the widest coverage for what the company does. “There are about 12 to 13 companies that do what we do,” he says. “But we are the only company that manufactures synthetic turf and sells it direct.”

There are a number of entities under the Support in Sport umbrella. There is a factory in Cumbria that employs 33 people while the UK construction business hires a similar number. Mullan adds: “In the Netherlands, we employ six or seven people but those numbers double in summer with part-time work. This is the busy time. Pitches are mainly built in the summer.”

Picture source

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