Entrepreneur Crispin Thomas’s TMTI has become one of the UK’s fastest-growing companies by teaching customers how to work the bewildering features on their mobile phones and other gadgets.
He had the “eureka moment” for his new business at the launch of Vodafone Live: “I asked a salesperson to show me how to send a picture message. She didn’t have a clue. I thought, ‘If she can’t do it, the general public doesn’t stand a chance.’”
So, in 2003, he and his brother Geremy set up TMTI [Take Me Through it] using £500,000 of their savings.
The early days were tough: “At first we were losing £50,000 a month,” he says. “That made it difficult to sleep at night.”
The company now works with a string of retailers across the country. If you’re struggling to get to grips with your new Motorola camera phone or you can’t work the remote control for the plasma-screen TV you just bought from Tesco, these are the boys to call.
Thomas describes the company as a “returns doctor”: “If we can help consumers use their new gadgets, we can stop them taking things back.”
TMTI launched its new online service gadgethelpline.com in September last year. For a monthly fee of £2.99, you can speak to someone every time you hit a technical stumbling block. It’s already attracted 70,000 members.
Sales at this Somerset-based firm have rocketed at an annual rate of 145 per cent over the past four years making it one of the fastest-growing companies in the country.