Success isn't a finite notion. For most companies, there's no clear point when they've made it, and can sit back and enjoy the fruits of their labour.
Instead, as Josh Gill, CEO of Teesside-based water supplier Everflow Water, points out, they need to always have an eye on growth.
Growth has always been a key part of the Everflow brand. In 2021, we appeared at number three on the FT1000 list of the fastest-growing companies in Europe. We made it onto the list again this year. Since our inception in 2015, we’ve consistently been the fastest organically growing water supplier in the UK. Since starting up, we’ve grown to have 136 employees across three offices and to have 112,787 Supply Point Identifiers (a reference number that tells us which water supply belongs to which business premises) on our books. Revenue has grown too, nearly doubling in the two years between 2019 and 2021, from £49m to £78m. So, that’s a lot of growth – and it doesn’t just happen by accident. Sure, we’ve got a great product and a great service, which definitely helps. And while we did always expect to grow, truth be told we didn’t necessarily expect to grow this much and this fast. But we did have a strategy, which meant that when it did happen, we could capitalise on it, while also staying true to our original vision – to make utilities simple and create an environment people enjoyed working in.
Growing the team
Like pretty much everyone, I’ve had jobs where I dreaded going to work, and so my vision for Everflow was ultimately to create a workplace people want to come to. That means, when it comes to growth, we have a responsibility to employ people who will not only add value to the company but also to the people they work with. And one thing I’ve learned over these past seven years of massive growth is that, just because it was your idea, it doesn’t mean you can do everything yourself. In reality, the best way to grow is to bring in specialists in each area who can tell you what needs to be done, and become leaders in their own fields. In fact, we’ve recently hired a dedicated growth specialist to continue the work we’ve done so far. Craig Dallison has joined us from a 20-year career in marketing, and has big plans to help us keep on growing. His remit will include growing both broker and direct sales, growing brand recognition in the markets that we choose to operate in, defining routes to market and launching the Everflow proposition in other utility markets.
Growing the business
For real growth, you need to innovate, and offer the market something new, or a different way of working – and that’s just what we did. Everflow is not simply a water supplier; we have also developed and created our very own switching software, Eclipse, which was absolutely key to our growth as a retailer in the early days. The business water retail market has not been open for competition very long, and so switching supplier has traditionally been quite uncommon. SMEs either didn’t know they could switch, or didn’t think it was worth it. However, Eclipse increases switching across the board by making it simpler for brokers, and improving customer experience. The software, which we launched onto the market in 2019, has allowed us to effectively scale up – operational employees per customer have been reduced from one per 400 to one per 2,205. Following that launch, Eclipse is now being used by over 50 per cent of the market. In fact, our phenomenal growth has been driven by how easy we make the switching service for brokers – many of whom tell us that they wouldn’t even sell water if it wasn’t for our tech. Ultimately, we’ve made it easy for SME customers to switch to us and engage with the market in a way in which other retailers haven’t done, and that, fundamentally, is why we’ve been so successful.
Planning ahead
In many ways, growth was already built into our success. Now we’ve proved that our systems can revolutionise the water market, particularly when it comes to business use, we can easily adapt them for other utilities too – and that’s just what we plan to do. And we’ll also continue to work with our teams across the board to take advantage of the sheer breadth of innovation and creativity we have access to. Each and every team member’s contribution is valued, and that’s how we get our best results. We hold frequent innovation and brainstorming sessions, where everyone is encouraged to share their ideas – after all, the people on the ground are often the best placed to see what could be done better. So, when it comes down to it, growth on a scale such as we have seen, comes down to a number of factors: a great idea, a good plan, the right team – and a little bit of luck.
