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Name: The Curve Group
Industry/sector: Outsourcing
Date founded: 2004
Founders: Della Wolfe and Jeanette Ramsden
Location: Northamptonshire
The Curve Group is a one-stop-shop for the people journey through a company – recruitment, induction, training, development and exit/out-placement, and is comprised of four businesses: Curve Search, Curve Outplacement, Curve Recruiting and Curve Outsourcing. The company also works with a broad range of organisations in financial services, consulting, leisure, food and business services and clients include Barclays, Virgin, RBS, Avon, LaSer and Aston Villa FC.
The company is also the largest privately owned HR company in the UK and its growth rates are phenomenal. From a team of 15 with a turnover of £400,000 in 2009-10, it accelerated to a turnover of over £10m, 70 staff and gross profits of over £1,300,000 at the end of 2013-14.
According to Lyndsey Simpson, co-owner of the Group, up until 2011 the business were entirely self-funded with a small amount of bank funding.
“Since then, the numbers have grown so we have a much more comprehensive bank funding package in place and still retain 100 per cent equity in the business,” she said.
“And about ten per cent of our revenues are non-UK but are all driven from the UK and growing as a proportion of our income. We are organically growing in this space by following our UK customers into other territories but only where we can complete 80 per cent of the fulfilment from the UK using video conferencing, travel etc.”
One of the keys to their success, Wolfe admitted, was social media.
“As a business it gave us a real opportunity to get our personality across, promote our business, inform and where we could – educate,” she said. ”It has been a success, our followers are close to 1,000, and we have engaged in some useful and insightful conversations. For us the positive feedback about how we do business has been a particular highlight.”
The company also suggested that: “By the very nature of the business being owned by three women, the company is a strong supporter of diversity and has provided diversity analytics and support for both female client employees and end-user customers in the format of free diversity consulting; networking events; mentoring and presenting at women in business events.”
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