From local to global: Canterbury-based WhosOff.com - now used in 42 countries - embarks on a pan-European campaign with a sponsored lorry after launching its paid-for service on December 15th
British success story WhosOff.com - one of the world's top online staff leave planners - goes on the road with a year-long advertising campaign after 700 companies sign up for the new service
WhosOff.com, the Canterbury-based online staff leave planner that boasts many companies in the USA among its newly-signed up 700 paying customers worldwide - totalling some 22,000 members - has started a year-long push into Europe by sponsoring a lorry from Dover freight firm Heritage International Transport. The promotion follows the switch by WhosOff.com in December from a free to paid-only service.
The refrigerated vehicle has been emblazed with the WhosOff.com trademarked logo and will be seen all over Europe - and the UK - during the next 12 months, starting December 17th, when it left for the continent with a consignment of chilled Christmas food for retailers.
Founded three years ago by software development firm X:drive, of Canterbury, WhoseOff.com had gained 65,000 members - and logged nearly 750,000 holiday and paid time off requests - by the time the service ended as a free version on December 14th this year. A new customer is Cyclescheme Ltd, which heads The Sunday Times Fast Track 100 companies and is a popular provider of cycle to work schemes for UK employers of all sizes.
WhosOff co-founder Reg Groombridge says, On December 15th we went paid-only and have had a fantastic conversion rate, to 500 companies and their 20,000 staff in 42 countries.
With WhosOff judged by CEO Magazine as one of the top six online leave planners in the world, we decided to plough more resources into developing it further. The paid-for business model allows us to do that and plan ahead to more than double our user base during 2010.
Groombridge adds that WhosOff shows that popular web services don't always need to raise venture capital or other major funding. It's still possible to launch web-based services at low cost and build up their user base to a healthy level. And it's not just Silicon Valley type companies that take on the world and succeed - WhosOff is proof of that.
Customers include Cyclescheme and another company in top 10 of The Sunday Times Fast Track 100, a Dragons' Den panel members company and a major global blue chip soft drinks manufacturer. Typical customers have between five and 500 employees. Customers are found in Hong Kong, India, Australia, the Cayman Islands and many other countries. The UK has the biggest customer base, followed by the USA, then Ireland and Canada in fourth place.
