Kelly Shotton was eight months pregnant when she and her husband James were both made redundant four years ago. It was the week before Christmas.
“We struggled to see a way out of it,” said James. “But we had a mortgage to pay, so we couldn’t just curl up in bed.”
The couple had been working for European Skytime, a supplier of private planes to wealthy individuals, before it collapsed. After two weeks fretting, the Shottons decided to target their former employer’s customers — and use a similar name, Skytime.
“We always talked about having our own business, but we’d never taken the plunge,” said James. “We were forced into it.” They used £20,000 of savings to launch a website and employ three people. Two months later their venture was profitable. Last year it made pre-tax profits of £314,000 on sales of £6.5m and revenues are expected to grow 40% this year.
Based at Gloucestershire airport near Cheltenham, Skytime charters flights for companies and customers with deep pockets, but not “footballers or famous people” — they’re more usually successful business folk who want to be flown to the racing at Cheltenham or Ascot in a helicopter, according to James. Flights range from £2,000 to £800,000. Skytime, which now has six staff, takes a fee for every flight it books — about 2,000 a year.
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Although customers can make an inquiry online, they can’t book a flight instantly.
“Customer service needs to be delivered by a person, not an algorithm,” said Kelly.
The couple, both 40, met at a New Year’s Eve party when they were in their mid-twenties. Kelly, the youngest of four, was brought up in a village near Oxford by her mother, a cook, and her father, who owned an engineering company. She went to Cressex Community School in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, and did a higher national diploma in fashion media at the London College of Fashion. After an unhappy stint as a make-up artist, she got an office job at an aviation company in High Wycombe, joining European Skytime as a marketing and client manager in 2000.
Five years later James joined the company as commercial director, though he “knew nothing about planes at all”. He had worked for Procter & Gamble and Gloucestershire recruiter Omega Resource. The younger of two brothers, he was raised in Hexham, Northumberland, where he went to Queen Elizabeth High School, before taking a higher national diploma in business at Newcastle University.
Working together for European Skytime gave them the confidence to set up a family business. They own it 100% and plan to expand without external investment.
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The couple live near the Herefordshire market town of Ledbury with their sons Oscar, 7, and Bailey, 4. Kelly warns entrepreneurs to be wary of gratuitous advice: “Whilst it’s lovely to hear, do not rush into things. Not everybody has the same passion about your business as you do.” James added: “Do not underestimate the amount of work that it takes to grow it.”