Press Release

Nottingham 22nd March 2002

Third Age (Ad)venturing

You're in your fifties, thirty two years in the pension scheme, the kids have flown the nest, the house is paid for, the voluntary redundancy scheme beckons and you're a long time dead--- what do you do ? Start a new career as an Internet Entrepreneur! Anyway that's what I did and started www.brite-sparks.com

It all started with a look around the stores at Annesley all these spare parts sitting on shelves to support manufacturing processes, all that money tied up in spare part inventories. How many more companies have similar inventories? These are the thoughts that struck me. I decided there and then to do something about it and create a company that would improve business effectiveness by virtually pooling this stock and saving all participants money.

First, get your ideas down on paper, do the sums and have a business plan that stacks up-halve the revenues and double the costs and if you are still making money-go for it.

Next get a team together, convince others to put time, money and talent into the venture and then struggle with events. Your little venture will soon be beset with difficulties, ours did, our leading Internet Guru was struck down with a brain disease on a lecture tour of S.E Asia and our other programmer got glandular fever. No business plan can foresee these events. The answer is to stick with it and keep a very tight hold of the money and you will get through, only to find that others are doing something similar! The Internet moves very quickly and you are not the only one with a bright idea.

Dogged persistence will see you through. We are developing a pooling and asset compliance tracking system for the East Midlands Fire and Rescue Services. We are also engaged in tracking via rfid (radio frequency identification) 14,000 patterns within a large midlands foundry and we have high expectations of establishing a pooling group of 40 factories within a leading UK food manufacturer.

So if you fancy a bit of (ad)venturing why not join us, sign up for our consultancy and sales opportunities at www.brite-sparks.com

Nottingham 23rd November 2001

brite-sparks announces cutting edge tools for slashing inventory costs

brite-sparks.com was founded a year ago and has just announced its first range of collaborative Internet tools to enable online cooperation between diverse businesses to share resources, optimise inventories, reduce costs and enhance productivity.

The Internet provides a communications channel through which businesses via brite-sparks can share information and expertise on inventories, resources and processes to drive operational improvements and thus aid all participants within the network. One example, the virtual pooling of inventory data enables brite-sparks to calculate lower, tighter more efficient stock holding for all participants, enabling businesses to maintain or improve their customer service levels whilst reducing operational inventories by 20% to 70%.

The brite-sparks Cracker IOS application is a downloadable module that provides stand alone and networked inventory management tools on your desktop PC. These tools provide overviews of operational and spare parts inventory duplication within and between businesses and organisations on a regional or manufacturing sector basis. The Cracker system guides the user in optimising operational stock holdings based upon their own prior experience and the duplication of stocks within their locality or sector.

The cost savings to industry can be massive: a large company can save millions of pounds, by reducing excess spare parts and operational stock holdings. These stocks are often only rarely used and can become obsolete before they are ever employed. Even a one million pound business can hold a £100,000 stock of tools and spare parts, cutting this in two releases cash, which the business can use far more productively. Brite-sparks assists businesses to realise the cash tied up in surplus inventory by providing a free electronic classifieds sales room for member companies.

brite-sparks is hosting a series of free seminars on how business and public sector organisations can collaborate to reduce operational inventory costs at Strelley Hall Nottingham on Thursday 13th December. The seminars will explain the technologies underpinning brite-sparks services and establish a number of pooling clusters within the East Midlands.

Unlike the recent disastrous news of investor's dotcom losses, brite-sparks was funded entirely by the staff that work for it. Says Joe Rice, the Chief Executive. "I had this idea and persuaded colleagues and friends to join in and it wasn't long before I gave up the day job to progress its development. I wanted to build a company that delivered real, affordable, tangible and measurable savings to business via this new digital infrastructure. There are huge opportunities for businesses to use the Internet to propel business efficiencies, brite-sparks services assist businesses to link suppliers and customers into digitally moderated supply chain that drive down waste and enhance productivity and profitability. Our objective is to provide the tools that equip businesses to maximise their efficiency and returns from this new digital infrastructure".