When schoolboy Cas Paton started earning cash by helping Trafford shopkeepers manage their money better, it was clear to everyone he was a born entrepreneur.
The dad was just 14 when he started teaching store owners how to increase their profits by ditching outdated price sticker guns – making a whopping £500 each time.
His advice was simple – stop using outdated prices that make products too cheap, therefore making margins too small. But the advice caught on and earned him a great reputation.
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His business expertise continued into his adult years when he set up a company in his first year of university.
The web design business, which Cas started with just £80, employed 27 members of staff by the time he graduated with a degree in law.
Cas has always been an entrepreneur
The entrepreneur, from Urmston, went on to launch several more ventures, including a swimming pool business, before moving onto e-commerce in 2014.
That’s when the 40-year-old launched OnBuy, a UK-based online marketplace that operates as an alternative to platforms like Amazon and eBay.
Incredibly, following its launch in 2016, the company managed to hit £10m in sales within just two years – and its rapid growth continued.
It now employs 130 staff, operates in 13 countries around the world and is estimated to be worth an eye-watering £152m.
“I think £152m is very small compared to what I believe we can achieve in the next four years,” dad-of-four Cas told the Manchester Evening News.
“We’re about to go and do Germany, the USA, Ireland, France, Spain and Italy. I genuinely believe over the next three to four years we could become a multi-billion-pound company.”
Cas Paton
OnBuy, which now has more than six million customers, connects buyers with a wide range of independent sellers offering products across various categories such as electronics, home goods, fashion and more.
But Cas’s entrepreneurial journey began way before 2016 – recalling how he used to help businesses around Urmston and Stretford maximize their profits when he was just 14.
“I would go into businesses that were using paper labelling guns and losing money,” he said. “I would make them more aware there was a solution.
“I picked out items that had rapidly changed in price – one was tuna. The prices were going up but they weren’t changing the paper gun prices.
“Once I had cracked the first shop, where I knew someone who worked there, I had that as a reference. I was able to say, ‘Look what we did for this shop,’ and move myself around with confidence.
“Once you’ve got experience, you’re speaking the same language. I was making £500 each time. I was never short of money.”
While OnBuy is hugely successful, Cas says he has no plans on slowing down. “To me, I feel like we’re on the ground floor trying to unlock the next thing,” he said.
“I don’t feel like we’ve really achieved anything yet. We might have the foundations, but there’s still so much to do.”