How do you become the fastest growing solar company in the UK?
practice kid, practice!
David Draper got that ‘practice’ by forming a boiler fitting company with his father, William.
William and David started Gas Fast in 2001 with William taking care of installation management and David developing software that would allow the company to expand nationally using contractors and remote salespeople.
Taking Gas Fast’s business model into the world of renewable energy, Solar Fast was launched in 2021.
The biggest problem facing the solar installation industry at this time was demand was far outstripping the supply.
A bottle neck had developed as many companies wanted to sell systems, but only a few were willing to take that big step into investing in imports.
Solar Fast had no such qualms and expanded its warehouse space to become a stockholder, importing renewable energy products and transporting them all over mainland UK.
On top of this, the software developed for Gas Fast was further developed to cater for sales, installations and contracting Solar Energy systems.
Sale agents are supplied with appointments … and installers with equipment needed to do the jobs those sales generate.
Solar Fast grew at an astonishing rate and turned over around £9 million in its first year of trading.
Success like that creates its own buzz and soon Solar Fast was bagging awards left, right and centre, including David receiving the Entrepreneur of the Year Award at the Wakefield Express Business Excellence Awards – and the business being handed Best Business Transformation.
Solar Fast picked up another award for Best Business Transformation at the Yorkshire Post Excellence in Business Awards in 2022.
From 8 people working in David’s garage, Solar Fast has expanded into a 60 strong team, across 4 locations and 2 warehouses, installing up to 100 systems a week throughout England, Scotland and Wales.
The warehouse and procurement team at Solar Fast geared up to supply installation with 1000s of panels a week as well as all the batteries, inverters and peripherals needed for a top-quality Solar Installation.
Solar Fast now boasts its own, dedicated software development team, an inhouse marketing team, plus a raft of highly trained customer service and engineering staff.
Consequently, Solar Fast is now set to hit a turnover of £35 million before the end of the 2022 – 2023 fiscal year.
This is because, as well as having that much-needed personal touch, Solar Fast offers exceptionally good, marketable products with a high return on investment.
This is why, even though they may have been trading for less than 2 years, Solar Fast were ranked 181st in The Financial Times’ 1000 fastest growing companies in Europe 2022 -2023.
As the only British company in the top 200 to offer a renewable energy product, that makes Solar Fast the fastest growing solar installation company in the UK.
