Jonathan Elvidge

Jonathan Elvidge, founder of Gadget Shop and RED5 amongst others …
With a handful of 'O levels' and no real direction I left school at sixteen to dig holes in the road and climb telegraph poles. I stayed with what became Kingston Communications (now KCOM) for the next ten years moving through various technical, support and sales roles. I then took a leap. I felt there was a gap in the market for an innovative gift retail concept and set about doing it inspired by the success of other 'ordinary people' I had read about who had achieved extraordinary things driven by an idea and a belief, passion and determination. With everything on the line, The Gadget Shop was born in March 1991 in Hull. I never looked back.
Over the next ten incredible years The Gadget Shop became forty four stores across the UK, a pioneering web presence, and a market leading brand delivering £40m turnover. In 2002 With a nervous bank pulling their support, the resulting sale of shares to generate funds saw The Gadget Shop with a new owner and a new vision. It went into administration in 2005.
In 2002 a friend and I started Blue Sky Designs to create new products for the gadget and gift market. The Company continues to go from strength to strength and is now a dominant player in the gift and stationery market.
In 2005 a good friend and colleague from The Gadget Shop days and I decided to try to fill the gap on the high street for a gadget retailer and RED5 was born. With a different route to growth as the high street was hampered by the 2008 recession, we focussed on brand development working with a raft of respected market leading high street retail brands creating a variety of different routes to market. Over another incredible ten years we created another dominant and leading brand which we sold to our main competitor in 2015 in a multi-million pound deal.
There have been many other business adventures, including Monocle Madness! and more recently Moodbeam, an exciting new tech start-up with a vision to improve young peoples lives.