Car enthusiast, Olly Marshall, certainly knew what job he wanted to do when he was younger. It was therefore no surprise that he started a business repairing rally cars when he was 21, back in 2003. This quickly developed into him building and selling them, providing support at races, and eventually racing them.
As his skills and experience developed, Olly spotted an opportunity to use his expertise to build a better range of off-road accessories for Land Rover Discoveries, such as low-profile roof racks and underbody protection.
He launched this new service in 2010 and demand for the bespoke products grew fast, resulting in his company, ProSpeed, significantly expanding its manufacturing capacity, product range and global distribution network.
News spread about the company’s engineering ability to design bespoke products and in 2016, it was asked to convert four panel vans to replace articulated lorries with a more cost-effective and compact option for live broadcast. This was completed successfully at a cost of £1.4m each.
In 2020, ProSpeed designed, developed, and manufactured ten, six-wheel Hi-lux chassis, from concept to solution, for vehicles such as military ambulances, cherry pickers, fire and rescue vehicles.
This led to orders from the UK, Poland, and the Czech Republic for 14 more fire engines for delivery in 2021 and a further 25 in 2022.
With plans to double the 15-strong workforce, and with expensive parts to buy, it naturally put quite a burden on the working capital.
Reward was therefore introduced to ProSpeed by Craig Simpson at Real Commercial Finance.
Having met with Olly we were impressed with the structure, business plan, and the innovative and highly skilled team he had assembled, as well as the fact orders were flooding in due to the company’s growing reputation for producing top quality products. We therefore had no hesitation in quickly providing a £200k Business Finance capital injection so the company could continue to expand and meet its growing order book.
Commenting on the last 12 months, Olly Marshall said,
“With all that has been happening, we count ourselves to be very lucky. We have some great opportunities on the horizon with the 6×6 vehicles, the Discovery accessories, and some other spin-off projects that have come about from our growing reputation, including electric vehicles.
“We are thankful to Reward for providing the financial support to allow us to commit to these opportunities. It has been refreshing to work with Alan Sanderson and the Reward team, as it is how banking used to be, which is an approach a company like us needs to be able to grow.
“We are small but very innovative and enjoy a fantastic global reach into the special vehicles industry. To be able to discuss our future and opportunities face-to-face with someone who can ‘look into the whites of your eyes’ and make a real life, informed judgement has meant we have been able to propel ourselves further than we otherwise would have had the ability to do.”