A travel business that was relaunched two years ago after falling into administration during the pandemic has raised £5 million to fund its expansion in the United States.
Flash Pack was originally founded by Lee Thompson and Radha Vyas, a husband and wife team, in 2014 and before Covid had a team of 60 and a turnover of £20 million. Bookings collapsed in 2020 as travel restrictions were enforced and the company started to run out of cash as it was forced to issue refunds to customers whose trips had been cancelled.
Flash Pack ceased trading on November 3 that year and two days later Vyas, 43, and Thompson, 41, bought the company’s assets in a pre-pack deal funded by remortgaging their home and taking a small loan from Thompson’s family. That was followed by a “multimillion-pound” investment from PPF Group, the Czech investment firm, in June 2021.
In the two years since, the company is said to have had bookings of more than £20 million and to be operationally profitable. It has about 75 employees who work remotely, with 60 in Britain and the rest scattered worldwide.
The new £5 million investment round has been led by a new backer, JamJar Investments, the venture capital firm set up in 2013 by Richard Reed, Jon Wright and Adam Balon, the Innocent Drinks co-founders. Vyas said she had her pick of which of the three would sit on Flash Pack’s board: “We chose Richard predominantly because of his brand experience and that’s where our biggest focus is. We’re going to the US and we want to become the brand leader in this space.”
Advertisement
PPF also participated in the round, as did Active Partners, which previously has backed Leon, the healthy fast-food chain, and Soho House.
The money will be spent on technology development and to fuel growth in America, which accounts for more than 60 per cent of bookings. “We could either be a British company and do America a bit and sell to America from here, or we go there and do America properly,” said Vyas, who is planning to move to the east coast with Thompson and their four-year-old daughter next summer. “We’ve tried to do as much as possible from the UK first and now we’ve proven it [works] we’re going gung ho.”
Between now and next summer, Vyas said her main priorities were choosing a school for her daughter and appointing a country head to run the British operation while she and Thompson focus on the US. “We’re going out there because we feel we built it here, only we can build it there, but we’ll be constantly back and forth to ensure the UK team don’t feel like we’ve just deserted them,” she said.
