We’ve never written about Altitude Group before, because previously most of its business sat outside our SITS space. However, despite now being a much tinier business (having sold its £16m turnover Promotion Products Division to an MBO team over the period), what is left sits very much in our area of interest. As Altitude states, it is now a “purely information and technology services-focused company” providing business management solutions to the promotional products industry. Now with a total of 47 employees in the UK, Canada and the US, revenue from these continuing operations increased by 12% to £2.46 million in the six months to 30th June 2011, while the adjusted operating profit from continuing operations increased by 26% to £0.36 million. It’s not clear how the acquisition and integration of two companies – Technologo in March 2011 and The Logo Network in May 2011 – impacted the numbers.
Altitude looks like an interesting little company. They appear to have ‘got’ that their target market – the small business community – will lap up a quick and easy to implement ‘cloud’ business management solution. They are planning to launch a solution for “as little as $49 per month” later in 2012 allowing users that sign up to add his or her own products, instantly publish a website, receive orders, manage inventory, and use marketing tools and CRM solutions.... all from their iPad or laptop. They’ve only just won their first “major” US client – iPromoteU – but their financial report is full of great enthusiasm from the management team: “We have no doubt at all that the market potential is as large as we could ever have imagined and our most pressing problem is likely to be how we balance these many opportunities and prioritise them appropriately”. If that’s true, it’s a great problem to have.