Caroline Patten, Grassroots Recruitment

Partner Article

Stockport firm wins on Spark2Scale support programme

Grassroots Recruitment, which specialises in ‘grassroots’ or fundamental resourcing solutions for sales, technical and office vacancies, has been selected to benefit from Greater Manchester Business Growth Hub’s Spark2Scale programme.

From a pool of over 300 companies Grassroots was one of only 17 businesses within Greater Manchester appointed to the programme’s first cohort, and the only one in Stockport.

Despite having been running for almost 10 years, Grassroots was selected due to their incredible pace of growth in recent years and increasing reputation as Stockport’s go-to recruitment agency. Last year, Grassroots achieved a record 550% increase in turnover.

Over the 12 month period, they launched a new IT contract division, moved into Stockport’s iconic Regent House offices to accommodate a doubling in their workforce, secured six-figure funding from Lloyds Commercial Finance and were appointed first-tier supplier in several major new client acquisitions. Grassroots are now on track to deliver £1.2m turnover this year and achieve a minimum of 30% year-on-year growth for the next three years.

Operations Director Caroline Patten commented: “We are delighted to be recognised by the Spark2Scale programme. With their support we can accelerate our plans for expansion. We are in the process of growing our team, reinvesting in new infrastructure and upgrading to larger office space to support our ambitions.”

The company has secured three new contracts for large scale national accounts in the first quarter of this year.

Business Growth Hub Advisor Anthony Boe, who is based in the town, said of Grassroots: “We are looking forward to working with them because they have great passion for excellence in all that they do. In what was a competitive process to join the Spark2Scale cohort Grassroots demonstrated a strong commitment to driving ethical standards in recruitment. We could see this not only benefiting their own business, but flying the flag for responsible practice across the whole recruitment sector.

“I know from personal experience of working in and around the area that there are lots of fantastic businesses, across all kinds of industries and sectors, which have huge potential but also face obstacles to growth. The Spark2Scale programme is specifically designed to address these issues, and it aims to instil a positive, ambitious, and confident scale-up mindset in those companies which participate.

“Scale-ups can also help to drive innovation and create jobs in places like Stockport, so it’s great to see local firms with the potential to succeed take advantage of this fantastic, fully-funded Business Growth Hub programme.”

Over a 6-month intensive programme Spark2Scale will provide Grassroots with one-to-one consultancy, structured training, peer-to-peer networking and on-going support. This advice incorporates strategic planning, financial analysis and investment, digital marketing and brand development, leadership and growth backing.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Sue Souter .

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