History

Background

Prestige Purchasing began its life in the 1970s as the consortium service within Prestige Hotels. When Prestige Hotels became a part of Small Luxury Hotels of the World, David Locket assumed responsibility for the business, and traded it separately as Prestige Purchasing.

In 1997, founders David Read and Peter Isaac were senior Directors at Granada Group plc, and on the 1st January 2008 they bought LMS Consulting (the trading company of Prestige Purchasing) from David Locket.

Early Years

The original business plan had been to take the Consortium and grow it organically, staying very focused on the hotel sector and the individual hoteliers that are its customers. Whilst the business has done this, there was also considerable interest from ex-colleagues of David and Peter to provide help and support to much larger organisations. Between 1998 and 2000 Prestige built a purchasing consultancy business from scratch in order to satisfy these needs.

In 2000, David Bottle who had joined Prestige in 1998 was sent on the company’s first major assignment in the US, working with Adecco in Long Island New York. In that year we also commenced the building of our proprietary e-Procurement system, now called Multi-Buy.

A focused plan

By 2005 it became clear that for Prestige to continue to grow successfully it needed a much more focused business plan. As a result of this the business contracted, closing its business in the US and created a simple sector focused strategy. As a part of these changes Peter Isaac left the business, and in May 2007 was replaced by David Bottle as COO.

This plan (outlined on our Strategy page) has led to significant success, with Prestige becoming established as the leading supply chain consultancy business in its core sectors.