Elliot Jacob

Born January 2nd 1975 in London's East End and with a passion for creative selling Elliot made his first sales in the school playground trading 5.25" floppy disks for cash. From these early sales he soon went on to supplying teachers, pupils & parents - at 16 he set up his first company. The taste for entrepreneurial life had begun!  Whilst tinkering with his fledgling business, he also took a Saturday job at his local office supplies store, where he continued to work for 3 years at weekends and holidays, learning the business from the shop floor perspective.

On leaving school he went to work in the software industry, initially in Telesales and later Field Sales for a Venue Resource Company called CID Publishing - which in 1994 was one of the first companies in the UK to provide updates to its CD products via the web.

He then moved to Maxis Inc. to work on the SimCity brand as European Channel Marketing Manager and was responsible for in-store marketing across all major resellers throughout Europe.  Following the acquisition of Maxis by Electronic Arts, Elliot left to work as UK Sales Manager for Intuit (the makers of the best selling accounts software Quicken) until one day he met up with the owner of the store he had first worked in as a schoolboy & was offered the chance to buy-out the business.

After 1 year, Elliot secured the deal & set about restructuring, branding & renovating the operation to fit with his vision of the future of office products.  He refurbished the retail store, creating a design-led store that saw sales rise within the first 12 months by over 35%.

He then established a commercial side to the business (it had previously only been a retail based enterprise), focused heavily on using technology & the internet to process and handle orders whilst remaining strongly customer-centric through the use of dedicated account managers to provide advice & guidance to clients pre, during and post sale.  UOE as the new brand was named [previously Universal Office Equipment] offers "a fresh approach" to business solutions & now stands as one of the UK's fastest growing office supplies companies with over 80% of clients ordering online.  Over the past 6 years Elliot & his team have grown the business by over 550% & aim to grow at a rate of 30-40% YOY over the next 5 yrs.

Elliot currently sits on the Board of Directors of UK based Office Friendly Dealer Association (turnover in excess of £200m) and is a member of the Institute of Directors and is the UK President for EO - Entrepreneurs' Organization (the premier global network of over 7,500 business owners)

Early on he thought of being an actor and studied alongside many other now incredibly successful actors and actresses. He still enjoys acting & recently completed a course at Mountview Conservatoire for the Performing Arts.  He says that his acting skills have always helped him in business-"after all every sales pitch is just a script and you want every audience to love you!"

Ambitious, bold, a little crazy but a lot of fun - a description of UOE or Elliot himself? He would say "both!"