SPARK business competitions

Spark Business Plan Competition – Applications have now closed for this year, register your interest to find out about this competition and other Spark events.

Business Plan Competition to launch January 2025

Do you have a business idea? Have you already started a business and want to take it to the next level?

If you are a University of Leeds student, or someone who has graduated from the University of Leeds in the last seven years, then you could enter the University of Leeds Business Plan Competition 2025.

First Prize: £2,000
Second Prize: £1,250
Third Prize: £750

(Prizes available at both levels, pre-start and trading up to 24 months)

For more information contact Angela Archer:

Email: a.m.archer@leeds.ac.uk
Tel: 0113 343 2551 (Mon-Fri 9.00am - 4.00pm)

Organised by Spark, the University’s business start-up team, the prestigious Business Plan Competition is open to both undergraduates and alumni who graduated up to 7 years ago.

This annual competition awards prizes in two main categories: Pre-trading and Trading up to 24 months, with the winners of each receive a prize of £2,000. Altogether, the total of prizes awarded this year approaches £10,000.

“We are always incredibly impressed by the high calibre of entries we receive from our enterprising students and graduates. The brilliant business plans we judged this year were from individuals across all faculties, leading to a diverse mix of applications, and this competition allows us to shine a spotlight on their talent, innovation and creativity”

Kairen Skelley – Spark’s Head of Business Start-Up

Business Plan Competition Winners 2024

In the Trading category, Economics graduate Zhenyu Li won the £2k first prize for a business allied to his already successful company AutoSqueak, a leading supplier of car cleaning products which turned over some £800k in 2023. With deep knowledge of his sector, Zhenyu is taking on major players such as Eurocar Parts and Halfords by launching an e-commerce platform where individual motorists and automotive repair shops can directly source ‘automotive aftermarket’ products and parts. The platform will also use artificial intelligence to help users source exactly the right product, matched to the vehicle’s make and model.

“My platform will deliver a cost-effective and technologically advanced online marketplace that connects UK car owners and repair shops with a global supply network.”

Zhenyu Li

Winner in the Pre-Trading category was Tom Milner, a final year Electronics and Computer Engineering student. Tom already holds an Enterprise Scholarship for a separate digital music streaming venture, but his latest winning idea is an innovative 3-D printed bracket to wall-mount houseplants without screws or permanent fixings. The Klip product solves the problem faced by students and others in the rental market who aren’t allowed to make alterations to their accommodation. It’s also a great solution for anyone not great at DIY!

“Having this recognition from the experts on the judging panel is a fantastic boost and the £2k prize money will be really helpful to do more product testing to improve the design and experiment with colours and branding ahead of launching Klip hopefully later this year.”

Tom Milner

Two £1000 ‘special recognition’ prizes were awarded by Nick Howard of Limehouse – himself a former Business Plan Competition winner. Nick chose Alex Neish’s outdoor clothing company Chameleon Concealment which makes photo-realistic camouflage for players of airsoft, a paintball-style team game; and secondly, Jay Brown’s company JBS Sourcing, a distributor of popular branded products that uses Amazon’s fulfilment services to streamline sales, returns and customer service.

Speaking at the Awards lunch in March held in University House, Kairen Skelley, Head of Business Start-up at Spark said: “This was another year of superb business plans. It’s such an honour to work with such talented and insightful entrepreneurs.”

The full list of winners: Trading category

1^st prize - £2000: Zhenyu Li, AutoSqueak Ltd
2^nd prize - £1250: Trib Gosain (International Business and Marketing, 2020) and business partner Reid Jacoby for Gilley, an innovative new umbrella design
joint 3^rd prize - £750 each: Jay Brown (Y4, Business Management), JSB Sourcing Ltd; and Sarah Jane Clayton (Y3 Midwifery) for Breathe and Birth, providing hypnobirthing and birth education classes
Limehouse special recognition award - £1000: Jay Brown, JSB Sourcing Ltd

The full list of winners: Pre-trading category
1^st prize - £2000: Tom Milner for the Klip wall-mounted houseplant bracket
2^nd prize - £1250: Iona Elborough-Whitehouse (current MSc Management Consulting) and business partner Claire Sutton for Swimsets - waterproof resources for swimmers and swim teachers to use at the poolside
Joint 3^rd prize - £750 each: Alex Neish (Y3 Fine Art with History of Art), Chameleon Concealment; and Dr Joshua Nivern (BSC Medicine 2016) for ToothPik, a patient-facing dentalcare comparison website
Limehouse special recognition award - £1000: Alex Neish, Chameleon Concealment

Competition News

Top enterprise award is music to students’ ears

A product addressing a gap in the home music production industry, spotted by two Music, Multimedia and Electronics students, has won the University of Leeds’ Sir Peter Thompson Enterprise Award.

The prestigious annual award, organised by the University’s business start-up service, Spark, comes with a huge cash prize of £5,000 generously gifted by Mr Michael Collins, Chairman at Goldcrest Custom Homes Ltd.

This year’s winners are friends and business partners, Sol Harter and Matthew Twitchen (both 22), whose business venture, Ludwig Devices, will design and manufacture small affordable decibel meters for the burgeoning home music production community.

“The idea came about through a chance conversation,” explains Sol. “Matt and I are both music producers with home studios. We both independently tried to by a low-cost decibel meter designed for small production studios and neither of us could find one because such a product didn’t exist. We thought this was bizarre, considering how useful it would be to the huge numbers of ‘bedroom’ Producers, DJs’ and musicians. It set us thinking that we had the skills and knowledge to design a low-cost version ourselves that amateur musicians could afford.”

The aim of their product is to prevent long-term hearing damage that can be caused by prolonged exposure to loud and persistent noise. Matthew explains: “The threshold for hearing damage is 85 decibels, but the most popular and commonly used monitoring speakers for home studios have a maximum decibel rating of 100-110 decibels. There are decibel measuring tools available for building sites, factories and nightclubs but these products are not suitable – or affordable - for the home environment, so it’s an untapped market for us.”

The Sir Peter Thompson Award requires selected students and graduate entrepreneurs to present their business ventures to a judging panel. Mr Collins, who chaired the panel, said: Matthew and Sol had an exceptionally well thought out product and business plan. They were the only candidates for Sir Peter’s prize to have already thought about and incorporated responses to challenges and suggestions made by myself and the panel, or had a detailed plan to do so.

“It was very impressive.” Says Sol: “The cash prize is an incredible boost and we’re very grateful to Spark and to Mr Collins. It means we can now accelerate our plans and go straight from concept to an initial production run with minimal additional fundraising.”

Matt and Sol are already researching components for their first prototype and will be designing a custom Printed Circuit Board using the embedded systems development and design skills honed in their university degree. They hope to be able to launch their first product in around six months’ time, with a first small run of around 500 units.

Kairen Skelley, head of Student start-up at Spark, said: “The Spark team wholeheartedly encourages, supports and celebrates student enterprise across the board, whatever the inspiration or target market. But it is especially exciting to see Sol and Matt using knowledge and expertise gained from their degree studies here to develop a novel business venture with such great potential!”