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Market and Sector Type:: Software
Article Type:: Profiles

Taking the growth risk: Misha Gopaul

Article Date: Jan 28 2009

Misha Gopaul, Fabric Technologies

Your business is profitable, but you know it could be a lot bigger. Do you play it safe or raise your game? Misha Gopaul, CEO of IT consultancy Fabric Technologies, explains how he faced the dilemma.

We formed Fabric Technologies from the merger of two companies. Both had been very profitable and were ticking along nicely, but we had aspirations to take the combined business to another level where we could a wider range of services and deal with larger accounts.

In poker terms, we went all in: we rebranded the business completely and spent a lot on marketing and on new facilities such as a network operations centre.

We knew we had to get a lot more volume for the business to be viable. We saw almost 50 per cent sales growth to £5.2 million in our first year, when we made a loss, but we returned to profit after another six months and now our turnover’s increased to £7.3 million.

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