How I Made It: Ross Williams, Founder of Whitelabeldating.com

THE SUNDAY TIMES - Nov 1 - The desire to have his own business came early for Ross Williams. He proved his business sense by buying magazines in bulk at the local market and selling them at a big mark-up in the playground. As a teenager Williams started Rawnet, which built websites. By the time Rawnet was employing 20 people, it had revenues of £2M but was still not making any profit. In 2003 he set up a side venture, called Global Personals. Williams and his fellow directors loaded their credit cards, borrowing a total of £30K. His gamble soon began paying off. While Global Personals had grown to £250K/month and was making 20% profit. At this point he decided to concentrate on the dating business. He decided to offer his dating website system to other businesses, allowing them to create their own dating brand while he took half the proceeds from sales. This “white labelling” approach had several advantages over running and marketing a single conventional dating service, said Williams. Last financial year, one of the main parts of which is Whitelabeldating.com, made a profit of £1.5M on sales of £12M, though Williams expects that by the end of this financial year the profit will have risen to £3M on sales of £20M.