Below are brief descriptions of some our investments. Further details on our investment criteria can be found in the ADL FAQ's section.

LOGISTICS

ByBox

Avonmore invested in Bybox in March 2003 alongside several other private angel investors and has, since then, grown without any further equity financing.

Bybox is now the UK’s market leading supply-chain solution specialist operating with an unrivalled network of more than 18,000 secure drop-boxes at over 1,200 locations across the UK with growing European operations. Utilizing Thinventory™, its end-to-end field service software platform, Bybox manages the entire process from purchase orders to picking, from engineer ordering to delivery, from customer service to billing - thereby minimizing stock holding within the supply chain and maximising productivity of field engineers.

Since investment, Bybox has made exceptionally strong progress both in the UK and internationally. It achieved UK first place in the 2007 Deloitte Fast 50 awards, based on sales growth over the previous five years and is expanding into the consumer market with the launch of ‘mybybox’. It is consistently profitable on a significant multi-million pound turnover.

More details can be found at www.bybox.com

IT/SOFTWARE/INTERNET

Commerce Decisions Ltd

Avonmore invested in 2001, as lead investor in its initial seed round. A further investment was made as part of a £1.8M financing round alongside Top Technology Ventures and Herald Ventures in July 2003.

CDL has a software package called AWARD that helps organisations making large procurements manage the bidding process more efficiently. The company grew strongly into a profitable, multi-million pound turnover business and a successful exit was achieved through the sale to Qinetic Group plc in October 2008.

Further details on the company can be found at www.commercedecisions.com

GroupSpaces Ltd

GroupSpaces was founded by at team of Oxford University students and received funding from Avonmore Developments in 2008.

GroupSpaces has developed an online toolset that simplifies the way real-world groups manage and promote themselves in an increasingly online world. Following a successful pilot programme at Oxford University, the product has now become the dominant club management product in the UK university market and is also increasingly used by non-student groups.

Revenue has grown well since investment and, in addition to securing advertising contracts with over 70 blue-chip firms, the company has developed several non-advertising dependent revenue streams, including event ticketing and membership subscription services.

Further details can be found at www.groupspaces.com

Specle Ltd

Avonmore was lead investor on Specle’s seed funding round in April 2009.

When creative material is produced for an ad campaign, agencies and pre-press providers must adapt it for possibly 100s of publications, with each publication having different page sizes, mechanical and colour requirements and delivery requirements.

The process of gathering this information for a campaign and therefore preparing final ads for print has been a time consuming, costly and often painful process. Specle has solved this problem by creating a powerful online database of specs at www.specle.net that now contains most of the UK’s major titles and is increasingly rapidly in size through the ability of publishers to upload and update their own data. A variety of revenue streams are being developed around this database.

Further details can be found at www.specle.net

Tagman Ltd

Avonmore made a significant investment into Tagman as part of a $1.3M round in February 2010.

TagMan is an independent tag management solution that enables agencies and advertisers to manage online marketing tags/pixels and the data they provide much more effectively (Tags/pixels being pieces of code used by the entire digital advertising industry to track the performance of online campaigns). A single TagMan tag is installed on any advertiser’s page that needs tracking and thereafter all other tags/pixels that need to sit on that page are housed and managed through the TagMan tag and browser-based interface.

The system allows tags/pixels to be added, edited or removed direct from a web page in minutes — a process that can ordinarily take months — and enables marketers to track the full customer journey a customer takes to a website. This allows them to plan future activity more effectively and eliminate duplicate commission payments where more than one channel claims the same sale. Since tags/pixels can be easily added and removed, TagMan allows agencies and advertisers to move between tag providers, such as ad servers and affiliate networks, as they see fit.

TagMan clients include online advertisers and agencies in the US and Europe, including Virgin Atlantic, Boden and Thomas Cook.

Further details can be found at www.tagman.com

Virtual IT Ltd

Avonmore invested in Virtual IT in 2002/03 and hasn’t had to raise equity financing since then.

Virtual IT provides IT outsourcing service to the SME market to address the common issues such as wrong level and skill of IT support, slow and unreliable systems, incorrect hardware and software configurations and weaknesses in security and backups at a fixed price per user per month. The customer base includes companies with between 5 and 100 users in a wide range of industries, with a particular focus on service oriented organisations.

Virtual IT has grown significantly since investment. The company now supports over 3,000 desktops and is consistently profitable on a multi-million pound turnover. It was included in the 2007 Deloitte Fast 50 UK awards, as recognition for growth within the technology sector over the last five years.

More details can be found at www.virtualit.biz

Omega Logic Ltd

Avonmore made an investment into this Reading-based firm in 2001 that provided pre-pay phone transaction processing services for the major UK mobile telecom operators. Omega Logic's clients included retailers such as Woolworths, Carphone Warehouse, Dixons Store Group and HMV and it grew strong during the time of our investment.

A successful exit was made through its sale to EPOSS Ltd in January 2003 which was subsequently bought by First Data Corporation in the USA. The founders of Omega Logic have subsequently invested alongside Avonmore in several other deals.

ADVANCED ENGINEERING/MATERIALS/BIOTECHNOLOGY

OCRobotics Ltd

Avonmore invested into the seed round this Bristol-based firm in February 2001 and in 2003 exercised its option to make a further investment in the company. It has been self-funding since then.y.

OC Robotics has developed a revolutionary type of robotic arm that they have termed the "snake arm" robot. This multi-segmented robot has the ability to follow a predetermined or real-time complex path around objects, with the "body" of the robot being able to follow the same path as the "head". This head can be fitted with a number of devices, for example, cameras, a gripper or processing tools.

The company has made good progress and it has a strong IP portfolio and is consistently profitable. Its customers have included the UK MOD, US DOD, Airbus, British Nuclear Group, Areva, British Energy, Rolls-Royce Associates and GE. Following its successful repair of a Ringhals nuclear reactor in Sweden, OCR has been working on major nuclear inspection arm for Ontario Power Generation that’s due for delivery in 2010. In 2009 it won a Queens award for Enterprise in the Innovation category.

More details, including a product catalogue, can be found at www.ocrobotics.com

Bac2 Ltd

Avonmore made an investment into this company in 2007 as part of a larger funding round which included a seed capital fund and several business angels.

Bac2's has a unique electrically conductive polymer, ElectroPhen ™ which cures at room temperature and can be economically produced in bulk. It’s ideally suited to production of the bi-polar plates (that generate electricity by combining hydrogen and oxygen to produce water) to produce fuel cell stacks. The company now has good levels of engagement with fuel cell manufacturers worldwide and has, as a side product of its major research, recently made available commercially its new CSRxx latent acid catalysts.

Further details can be found at www.bac2.co.uk

Polymertronics Ltd

Avonmore joined a consortium of investors that made a small investment into Polymertronics in December 2008 to investigate light emitting plastics and electronic hardware for wearable photodynamic (PDT) applications. Unfortunately, however, its technology was overtaken by competitors and the company was put into liquidation in 2010.

Cambridge Biostability Ltd

Avonmore invested in Cambridge Biostability Ltd (CBL) in November 2004 alongside a number of other investors.

CBL had developed patented technology that allows the stabilisation of heat sensitive vaccines. This is particularly relevant in developing countries where the destruction of vaccines through a break in the cold chain currently causes 50% of the vaccines administered to be non efficacious. CBL’s technology also allowed multi vaccines to be administered through a slow-release single dose.

Unfortunately, however, CBL suffered significant delays in developing its manufacturing capability. It was unable to find further financing during the credit crunch of 2009 and was closed down the same year.

Pout Ltd

Avonmore first invested in this London based cosmetics company in August 2003. It supported the company through several funding rounds and an Avonmore representative sat on the board as Investor Director.

Pout’s founders had recognized a gap in the cosmetics market for a brand that was sexy, feminine and fun. With product names such as ‘pop my bubble’ and ‘eye want you’ the company developed a cult following and grew their own brand label to over 180 items, including their ‘hero’ product, ‘Pout Plump’.

A profitable exit was made from this investment through the sale of Pout to Catterton Partners a US private equity firm in February 2007.

Inside Out Beauty Ltd

Inside Out Beauty raised funding from Avonmore in October 2007.

The experienced founders had developed “sip”, a pioneering range of natural flavoured waters, to capitalise on the fast-growing flavoured water market and consumers’ increasing interest in drinks that are free from artificial additives.

The company grew strongly post investment and in January 2009 was sold to Peter Jones, of ‘Dragons Den’ fame.