Rhys Adams : Curriculum Vitae

EDUCATION

West Park Community School
Spondon, Derby.
9 x GCSE's including English, Maths and Double Award Science
1 x RSA in Word Processing

Spring Skills
Derby, Derbyshire.
NVQ Level 2 in Retail Operations

Protocol Skills
Derby, Derbyshire
NVQ Level 3 in Customer Service

Derby College
Mackworth, Derby
ABC in Photoshop Techniques

WORK EXPERIENCE

Cocoon Vehicles Ltd
Pride Park, Derby, DE24 8AN
Marketing Director
April 2009 to Present

Sunwin Motors Limited / Co-operative
Sir Frank Whittle Road, Derby
Group Marketing Support Manager
January 2004 to April 2009

Balloon and Party Ideas / P@RTY PLC
Radbourne, Derbyshire
General Store Manager / Internet Design
June 2000 to January 2004

Sainsburys Supermarkets Ltd
Kingsway Retail Park, Derby.
Price Controller / Area Stock Admin
August 1999 to June 2000

Shoe Express / British Shoe Corp.
Eagle Centre, Derby.
Stockroom Manager
October 1996 to AUGUST 1999

BUSINESS EXPERIENCE

These are a few of the businesses I have set up and run. Many as trials to see if they would work. I started very young with my business ideas. When I attended West Park School, I was once detained for purchasing BIC Biros from Viking Direct for 6p each and selling them for 15p, undercutting the school by 5p.

Small Busy Web
July 1999 to April 2007
I started Small Busy Web in July 1999, the idea came to me when I was off work for a month with Glandular Fever. I sat and taught myself HTML by reading the source code off popular websites and adapting them for my own sites. At that time, the internet had taken off very quickly and everybody wanted a site. I approached local businesses and offered a domain name and a 5 page website for £99. It took off very well, and up until 2007 I was running this as a side line to my regular employment.

SBW Phones
April 2002 - Present
Mobile phones were extremely popular from the year 2000, but as technology changed rapidly, people found that having a 12 month contract you were tied to one phone for the duration. Sim Free telephones proved very expensive, and the markup from major shops was high. I contacted a few distributors and signed up as a wholesaler. Using my web design skills I designed an online catalogue and sold these using Paypal. In 2004 I was offered an affiliate website from 2U, I pointed my site to this domain and did some advertising. As new tariffs and services from the mobile providers  became available, I would snap up the domain names (eg. www.tmobileflext.co.uk). In 2005 I signed up for Google Adwords to help advertise the sites, which now brings in a steady regular income with little outlay.

SBW Rentals
April 2005 to April 2007
I started SBW rentals as a side line to Small Busy Web. My idea was to rent Fridge/Freezers to people who couldn't afford to buy them. I initially placed an advert in the Derby Evening Telegraph and the Derby Trader; Fridge/Freezers for Rent, CCJ's, Students, Bad Credit not a problem. Call SBW-Rentals on 01332 ??????. Within the first week, I had managed to source 4 used fridge/freezers and rent them out, once a month we would collect the cash from the people.

Balloonatics of Derby
February 2004 to Present
After leaving Balloon and Party Ideas, I realised how much I enjoyed Balloon Decorating so with a previous member of the BPI team, we set up Balloonatics. We advertised on the internet and within the Yellow Pages and have managed to fill our diary up most weekends in the Wedding Season. Gary has since left Balloonatics, and Sam, my partner and myself run it on a part time basis. We do not do as many bookings but August is always a very busy month for us.

Arnies Sarnies
July 2007
Arnies Sarnies came about when my mum mentioned that she wanted to get into catering. We did some market research in the local area, and there was a gap for quality food from vans. I purchased an X reg Renault Kangoo and had it adapted and sign written. We purchased quality food as oppose to cheap value brands. Although the van started off well, our competitors changed time slots and adapted there food prep. Within two weeks we were approached by one of the companies and we sold the van with stock at a profit.

Forklift Agency Ltd
September 2006 to Present
In September 2006, My Step Father, Jeff was working more or less full time as a sub contractor under the banner AAJ Training for various agencies. Doing this he found that there would be gaps where he had no work. I offered to set up a website and pay for some advertising. I chose the name as I wanted something simple; 1. so that customers knew exactly what we were about and 2. I wanted other instructors to come to us for work.
A simple website was uploaded and I advertised on Google to begin with, within the first day I had so many phone calls I couldn't cope with taking them and doing my regular job. But I managed to get a booking in London for Jeff. In the end I had to divert the calls to Jeff, as I was overwhelmed.
It is now a very successful company with a very good reputation of being honest and providing a high level of service.
The company now spends in excess of £3,500 per month in advertising costs and has over 30 instructors based all over the UK. All of the instructors have been vetted by one of the team and are all on a "one strike and there out" policy to ensure that they keep the high standard Forklift Agency provides.
As we are all building the Forklift Agency brand, we have now signed up a few Forklift Training Centres to carry out individual training. All of the training centres have been checked by our Training Manager. We have recently just registered Forklift Agency Group Ltd and Forklift Agency (Nottingham) Ltd

Doodi Team Racing
January 2009 - Present
I am currently help set up a Mountain Bike Race Team, Promotions company and Mountain Bike race events with my friends Chris Rider and Mark Nicolson. Forklift Agency, my company already sponsors Danielle Rider's website and Chris mentioned that there wasn't enough Racing events in the East Midlands Area. So we looked into the possibility of setting up our own race events based at Sherwood Pines, Mallory Park and Rother Valley. The interest of these East Midlands events was high so we have put forward some proposals. We are also looking into the possibility of filming other Race Events at places like Soggy Bottom and Sherwood Pines and offering a DVD to participents of the race.

COMPUTER SKILLS
I have used various different operating systems including Windows XP, 2000, Vista and MAC OS. At work I am mainly PC based, using Microsoft Office packages, Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop and Acrobat Professional. At work I also use Kerridge and ACT for managing databases and stock information.
At home I have various computers, but mainly use a 24" iMac with a 2.8ghz Extreme processor and 4gb of RAM, I use this with Microsoft Office 2008, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Acrobat, Apple iLife suite and various other programs. I enjoy manipulating photographs on the Mac including taking time lapse videos with iStop Motion and my Canon 350d. Examples of these can be seen on my youtube site.
I have also ordered myself a Server to run the computers at home, the Server was ordered from Dell and I will be testing Ubunto, testing the system with email and ftp access. I have had experience in setting computer networks up, including wired and wireless. As well as making these networks accessible via VNC software for remote working and ftp servers to enable quick and efficient file transfer.
Due to the businesses I have run and still am running from home I use Sage Instant Accounts and Instant Payroll.
In the past I have also used various EPOS systems, including setting up new systems from scratch and testing new systems before roll out. I have used these from all angles including inputting every piece of stock from a small retail outlet; entering cost price, retail price, min. stock levels, ordering codes, associating barcodes, discounts and more.

INTERESTS AND HOBBIES
I love coming up with new ideas on how to make money, many of the ideas do not go past the notepad stage but are never forgotten. Many people and colleagues as me for my advice and I enjoy helping them out.
I love spending time with my family, especially my partner and my son. We travel quite a bit at the weekends around the UK, taking advantage of every spare minute we have. We also enjoy traveling abroad and visiting new and interesting places. My favourite place to go is Berlin, which is where my family originated.
I also enjoy reading, especially books that give me useless pieces of information that come in handy at pub quizzes.