Press Release
Jan goes from Kitchen Table to Entrepreneur's Title
 |
|
|
Jan Smith has been named Entrepreneur of the Year for East Anglia – just 10 years after starting her business from a kitchen table.
The Chairman of top computer recycling company End-O-Line Services (EOLS) has won the title in the annual awards of the East Anglian Daily Times which covers Essex, Norfolk, Cambridgeshire and Suffolk.
It is the latest in a long line of awards for Jan and her Maldon, Essex-based company over the past two years.
The East Anglian Daily Times recognises Jan’s achievements with EOLS in which she has taken the company from a kitchen table concept with £20 in the bank to its current multi-million pound turnover.
Jan said: “I’m so thrilled to be named the East Anglian Daily Times’ Entrepreneur of the Year; it is a tremendous accolade. I have put in a lot of hard work over the past 10 years but I could not have done it without my staff. They have worked extremely hard to ensure the success of my original idea.”
With many Blue Chip companies and top financial firms among its client base, EOLS has become the UK’s foremost independent IT asset disposal company. It operates a zero landfill policy for the thousands of items it handles each week and its Blue Chip clients include global banks and financial institutions.
After all data is erased, 60% of the computer equipment is resold and 30% is given a new lease of life as components. The remaining 10% is passed to other recycling companies to use in an environmentally-responsible way.
This green approach to business recently helped EOLS to being named as a “Big Tick” Winner in the Environmental Impact section of the Business in the Community (BITC) annual awards.
Jan Smith, who is also the current Essex Businesswoman of the Year, had previously been in computer sales and it was this that gave her the business idea. She saw computer sales growing at a massive rate and realised that at some point they would need to be disposed of as equipment became redundant.
She added: “I saw that there was a market niche for disposing of redundant IT equipment in an environmentally-friendly way and started working from my kitchen table phoning potential customers.
“A decade on, some of those first customers are still clients of End-O-Line.”