On The First Day Of Business: With entrepreneur and star of Channel 4's Posh Pawn James Constantinou

From today (December 9), Bdaily is focusing its sights on businesses of all sizes across the North East, Yorkshire and London regions for an informal ‘12 Days of Business’ festive feature.

Running until Christmas Eve, we’re chatting to 12 businesspeople - SMEs, entrepreneurs, small business owners, anyone with a good story to tell! - on their achievements of the past year and how they’re going to spend their Christmas…

We’re sure you’ll have already guessed this part, but we’ve chosen each business and entrepreneur very carefully themed around Straight No Chaser’s 12 Days of Christmas song. Happy Holidays, as they say.

Kickstarting Bdaily’s first day of business, we’re having a chat with our partridge in a pear tree - in the form of solo entrepreneur and star of Channel 4’s Posh Pawn, James Constantinou.

Can you give us an introduction on who you are and what your company does?

My name is James Constantinou, and I’m the founder of Prestige Pawnbrokers and star of Channel 4 TV show Posh Pawn noted for delivering high end asset loans and offering liquidity for those looking to raise finance.

In 2009 I formed Prestige in order to facilitate loans against the more unusual collateral types, ranging from jewellery, art, fine wine to helicopters and cars.

The brand quickly gained notoriety with the help of the long running TV series Posh Pawn and has since established itself as the go-to lender for those with high end assets.“

What has been your biggest achievement of 2019?

“Prestige Pawnbrokers has gone from strength to strength, but 2019 was a turning point. Our greatest achievement was to secure funding for further growth.

“As with most rapid growth businesses, finance can be particularly challenging and this has proved to be the case for Prestige,with so many obstacles and possible routes to take.

“We have secured our long term position within this sector with a capital raise enabling further growth ,with anticipated healthy gains to be made with what looks like fruitful times ahead.”

If you could go back to the start of 2019 and tell yourself what you know now about your business, what would you say?

“I’d worry about the uncertainty of Brexit and how it would affect the smaller businesses on the high street, that and not being able to scale up Prestige throughout the political uncertainty.

“However, in business, you do have to take risks.

“Therefore I’d have said to take the risk, and to leverage the assets sooner rather than later.”

What are your company’s plans for the new year (and decade) ahead?

“Economically we are set to see great gains with demand for our services on the increase. The plans for the business is further growth with a five year plan to open more stores both here in the UK and abroad.

“There are current talks with taking the brand to Asia with interest from overseas and this is something we will be exploring in 2020.

“There are many untapped markets globally, business leaders around the world have shown interest in what we are doing and what has been achieved.”

How are you going to celebrate Christmas this year?

“This year will be spent with family and friends in Surrey.

“It’s an opportunity to come together and try to put work to one side at least for a few days…anymore than that and I get itchy feet!”

Follow #12DaysOfBusiness @bdaily on Twitter to keep up to date with our festive feature.