Vansdirect is one of those zero to hero stories that you hear about from time to time only this one is set in your back yard. Vansdirect is a company that has now firmly established itself as the UK’s largest independent new van retailer but the company was started from much more humble beginnings.

The inspiration for what has now become Vansdirect started back in 1997 when the company’s owner and managing director Carl Platel was driving across America in a motor-home and saw a company selling other motor-homes on the internet and via videotape. On his return to the UK, with the security that his wife Helen had a good job, Carl decided that he was going to start up his own business finding vehicles for people and then finding them finance for the vehicle. The meagre £2000 that he had to start the business was half spent on a second hand computer with which he could find the vehicles and he then managed to sell his first van to his neighbour.

The company carried on in this vein for eighteen months with Carl being the sole employee working out of a bedroom in his house still with his trusty computer and lots of determination and slowly the business started to gain momentum to the point that he was now working seven days a week and twelve hours a day. Finally the workload got too much for Carl on his own so he recruited his brother Mark and then brother-in-law Glen Newman making them all equal partners in the business then called Find It Fund It Services. The main idea of finding customers the vehicle that they required and then finding them the means to finance it was starting to be a popular one and wasn’t just limited to the world of vans and cars and as Carl humorously reminisced “We were even asked to get finance on an aeroplane once”.

The next five years was the start of the expansion for the business to the point that there were now twenty two people working for Carl spread through every room in his house, two in each bedroom, three in the conservatory and the hallway of the house became the main reception for the business. The expansion of personnel meant that Carl had to move out of his house and move back home with his father who luckily lived across the road so it didn’t impact too much on the commute to work. The straw that broke the camels back as it were with regards to space was the need for a portacabin to be placed on the back driveway of Carl’s house, it did the job for a while until the residents of Creiga petitioned the council to get it removed.

The setback of the removal of the portacabin didn’t dampen Carl’s spirits, instead the started to operate out of his brother Mark’s farm just down the road and year on year the company expanded bringing in more and more sales staff to cope with demand. The ever-expanding Find It Fund It business even expanded into importing motorbikes under the trading style of Bikes International and also importing vans from Europe under the trading style of Eurovan.

The array of vehicles that the company was now finding and funding was covering just about anything that they were asked to get and a decision had to be made as to which direction to focus the business and the decision was made to focus solely on vans and the UK supply of vans, Vansdirect was born.

In January of 2003 and now with forty-four members of staff Vansdirect opened its doors in its current location in Coed Ely just up from Llantrissant and from then on the rise to current day was rapid. Since the opening of the new premises, Vansdirect have gone from strength to strength swelling in size from forty four up to over one hundred and twenty staff turning over £100 million and selling over ten thousand vehicles a year.