Wallingford's Gladstone announces £14m turnover in year-end results and projects figure to rise to £18.5m by 2025
Gladstone Ltd, the Wallingford-based leisure management software supplier, has reported turnover of £14m in its latest financial year-end results, which it says, represents growth of 127% in the last four years.
The tech company also projected turnover to reach £18.5m by 2025 while it pledged to continue to invest 50% of its profits into research and development, and to increase R&D spend by 10% year-on-year as the sector learns from digital solutions.
The company, which has over 500 health and leisure operator customers, including David Lloyd, Everyone Active, and Fitness First, is predicting that 90% of consumers will prefer to engage with leisure operators digitally in the next five years.
READ MORE: Two senior leaders join Wallingford’s Gladstone
Claire Rollins, CEO of Gladstone, said: "We recognised long before covid-19 that the industry was lagging behind other industries from a digital transformation standpoint, and so we have been deliberate, and will continue to be, in investing at a level beyond that of our competitors in research and development.
"Covid-19 has inadvertently created opportunity, with the move to digital undoubtedly fast tracked, but now isn’t the time to stand still where it has forced thinking, and we’re committed to being at the forefront of continued digital transformation."
Rollins added that the company was committed to "building the best possible team" having brought on board in Q4, 2022, a dedicated higher education manager, and most recently Steve Scales, formerly of ukactive, as chief revenue officer.
The latter noted that the energy crisis was presenting an "immediate and considerable challenge for the health and fitness sector, but to be best equipped coming out of the other side of it, operators need to prioritise investing in digital".
"As an industry we have to better use technology to put the consumer first, to attract and retain members, and to drive operational savings and enhanced efficiency," he added.
