Deloitte Technology Fast 50: No. 3
GPEG is the UK's largest developer of electronic displays for gaming, consumer and professional markets. Founded in 2005 and based in London, the company employs 13 people and is privately held.
GPEG is based in Woolwich, South London. The location was purely coincidental, since it isn't close to the company's major customers, but London has proved a good location for recruitment, says Nick How, the company's CEO. "Before this, I ran a company in Dublin, which is great but made for painful recruitment" he says.
As a relatively small company, How believes that GPEG will continue its impressive growth in 2012 and beyond. "There is still a lot of the market that we haven't penetrated yet, and our biggest customers have not been spending to their full capacity in recent years. The opportunity for growth is still large."
However, a lack of funding means that the company cannot grow as rapidly as How may like. "If you look at what funding is available, you can either invest in new technology or expand, but you can't do everything. For that reason we focused on building sales and used that organic growth to fund expansion, including opening our first office in Italy during 2011" he says.
Another significant challenge for any growing business is dealing with red tape and health and safety, How says. However, a more significant concern for GPEG is intellectual property and how it can be protected. "Understanding patents, IP protection and so on is much more of a priority for us, and it is difficult sometimes for small businesses to protect their assets, and understand the intricacies of the rules."
Finding skilled staff is an ongoing challenge and the UK labour market simply doesn't have enough people with the skills GPEG needs, says How. "We struggle to find electrical engineers in the UK and for one recent vacancy 90% of the candidates came from outside the UK. We don't have enough people with the right skills."
In the coming months, the company is hoping to complete patent registration for three new products, which have been receiving positive press coverage ahead of their launch. "We have a new home improvement product that we're especially excited about" says How.