News | December Shell LiveWIRE Grand Ideas Awards Winners Announced
Wednesday 1st February 2012
4 young entrepreneurs have been been named as winners in the £1,000 Shell LiveWIRE Grand Ideas Awards for December 2011.
Those young entrepreneurs are:
Guido Molinari (Ice Italy)
Ice Italy produces high-end ice cream-based artisan frozen desserts and distributes them to the London hospitality industry. The production is 100% made in Italy in partnership with local artisans. The business oversees the production, import, marketing, sales, and distribution processes. They currently have four product lines servicing different needs within London's high-end culinary scene menu offering.
The business currently works with restaurants, hotels, catering companies, clubs, airlines, and both public and private institutions. Their products are of high quality in terms of ingredients used (mostly sourced from local biological farms) and the level of craftsmanship of the artisans.
Andrew Pallett (Urban Alpha Ltd)
Urban Alpha is a designer menswear retailer selling branded products through its website with a vision to change the accepted standard for e-commerce. By building a website that combines exciting content with its products, the business intends to change the online retail industry by allowing them to contribute to content and get customers more involved with their purchases online.
Launched on 1st November 2011 after nearly 3 years market research, the business is currently working on:
- creating interactive men’s style guides that thrive on customer submissions and
- expanding the product range exponentially to offer a wider variety of menswear products
While focusing on growth, the plan is to build up a solid foundation before taking on the big players in the online retail industry.
Dan Taylor (The Giving Card)
The Giving Card is a discount card linked to charitable giving. In a nutshell, the general public can save thousands of pounds a year on their shopping, charities get additional revenues and the companies the business work with get free advertising and increased footfall into their stores and websites. It offers charities an easy way to raise extra revenues and increase their public profile, involving no charges or stockholding at any time. It also aims to reward people and businesses that want to support charities. Members pay £34.95 per year, which includes a £10 donation that goes directly to their chosen charity. There is no participation fee for either charities or suppliers.
Eleanor Watson (Poikos Ltd)
Poikos Ltd is a technology company that is currently developing MeasureCam, a system whereby bodily dimensions may be taken from any webcam, and then applied to a model to create a true to life digital avatar of a person. This technology has many implications for mass customisation (i.e. the personalisation of products at prices comparable to mass production). Poikos has set itself a mission to master a British competence in this field. Poikos intends to allow the market for such services to demonstrate itself by providing a web and Smartphone-enabled tool which can allow a user to measure their bodily dimensions and produce a map of their morphology. This can be accomplished simply through the use of any digital camera, and the application of sophisticated algorithms.
Comisserations to Matthew Holden (Youth Orienteering Ltd), Katie Hudson (Pro Science), Abdul Khan (Rate That Meal), Darren Lester (theCADcube), Henry Morris (Fair Access to the Professions) and Alex Smith (Fizz Pop Science) who were shortlisted but did not win this time around.
Win Funding for Your Business
If you think that you or your business has what it takes to win a £1,000 Shell LiveWIRE Grand Ideas Award you can apply online now via our Awards page
