Gloucestershire business wins South-West Recruitment StartUp of the Year Award

By Peter Davison

20 June 2023

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Marvel FMCG at The Start Up Awards

Gloucestershire based startup Marvel FMCG has won the prestigious South-West Recruitment StartUp of the Year Award.

The StartUp Awards has been launched to recognise the booming startup scene across the UK which has accelerated since the 2019 pandemic. Over 800,000 new businesses were founded in the UK since 2021, a 4.3 per cent increase from the year before.

A record number of businesses applied to this year’s StartUp Awards, with 1,100 firms shortlisted across ten UK nations and regions. The contribution of these firms - all of which were started in the last three years - is significant, having created over 5,000 new jobs since they were established and generating annual sales of £584 million.

Marvel FMCG is a recruitment company that was founded by Rich Howell and Lucy Reeves in 2021 to change the way recruitment is done. The business won the South-West Recruitment StartUp of the Year Award.

Lucy Reeves, founder of Marvel FMCG said: “We are absolutely thrilled to have won the award and receive the recognition for the impact that we are having. In has been an incredible journey from starting the business literally at our kitchen tables, to today we have donated over £68,000 to our charity partners Alzheimer’s Society, The National Autistic Society, Mind, The UK Sepsis Trust and Gloucestershire based charity Caring for Communities and People.

"We have achieved full UK B Corp certification, realised our Carbon Neutral ambition and created a network to support people in the FMCG industry that are unemployed. We are so proud to be part of the awards and thank everyone we have worked with so far at Marvel FMCG that have made our journey possible.”

Supported nationally by Starling Bank, British Business Bank, BT, Creative Ideaz, GS1 UK, Jeeves, Join Talent, ScoreApp and The Purposeful Project, the programme celebrates the achievements of the amazing individuals who have turned an idea into an opportunity and taken the risk to launch a new product or service.

Professor Dylan Jones-Evans OBE, the creator of the StartUp Awards, said: “Start-up businesses are the lifeblood of any economy, being responsible for new jobs, innovation and in supporting communities in every nation and region across the UK.

"All of the finalists this year represent the best of those entrepreneurs who have spotted an opportunity and through their sheer hard work, talent and perseverance, have created an amazing new business that is creating real impact in its sector.”

The StartUp Awards was created in collaboration with the team behind the Great British Entrepreneur Awards, one of the most successful awards programmes in the UK. The StartUp Awards are running for the second year after launching in 2022.

By Peter Davison

Peter Davison is deputy editor of The Business Magazine. He has spent his life in journalism – doing work experience in newsrooms in and around Bristol while still at school, and landing his first job on a local newspaper aged 19. By 28 he was the youngest newspaper editor in the country.

An early advocate of online news, he spent the first years of the 2000s telling his bosses that the internet posed both the biggest opportunity and greatest threat to the newspaper industry and the art of journalism. He was right on both counts.

Since 2006 he has enjoyed a career as a freelance journalist. He lives in rural Wiltshire with one wife, two children, and three cats.