Nectar small business awards winners announced

Three young men have scooped prizes for best small business, best startup and best entrepreneur at the first Nectar Business small business awards. Among them is 24 year old, Rob Mattham founder of Shiply.com an innovative online transport marketplace.

Other winners include the very well known, but astonishingly young (considering what he’s achieved at just 20) Fraser Doherty of SuperJams who clinched the best entrepreneur award and James Taylor whose business SportStars was named best small business of the year.

Robert Mattham’s startup Shiply.com is perhaps the most innovative and interesting of the bunch.

He discovered that 25% of lorries on British roads run empty every day estimated to be 36 million tonnes of unnecessary CO2 pumped into the atmosphere each year.

Shiply.com, an online transport marketplace, attempts to improve this environmentally damaging situation by allowing users to list goods and eBay items requiring transport which are then bid on by a pool of 3,500 hauliers who may already be making similar delivery trips.

If you’ve ever used a supermarket home delivery service, you’ll know that you can select delivery times to match hours when the delivery van is already in your area. It’s a similar kind of principle.

Robert plans to expand the site to Australia later this year, having already received over 23,000 shipping requests.

Fraser Doherty set up his business, SuperJams, making jam at his grandmother’s kitchen table when he was just 14. Six years on and Fraser’s jam is stocked in all the major supermarkets, selling over 500,000 jars a year.

Finally, James Taylor’s SportStars, which won small business of the year, was set up to provide UK children with quality sports coaching as part of schools’ PE curriculum.

In its first year SportStars grew its school contracts from 5 to 30 and has also developed a subsidiary brand, SuperStars, which aims to provide a similar service for children interested in developing their arts skills.

All in all some great winners and inspiration to the one in four young men who say they would like to start their own business according to YouGov research.

The only question we have about the awards is whether the judges had a predilection for sibilant small businesses?