Updated: Schoolboy, 16, is mobile phone tycoon (From Echo)

Updated: Schoolboy, 16, is mobile phone tycoon

11:19am Tuesday 2nd December 2008

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A SIXTEEN-YEAR-OLD entrepreneur is selling £30,000 of mobile phones and other gadgets a month.

Now Gary Cooper is spreading the word about his business by sponsoring the scoreboard at Southend United.

During the day, Gary studies for his A-levels at Southend High School for Boys.

But before and after school, the Benfleet lad runs GP’s PC’s, selling the latest mobile phone models and other gadgets via his company’s internet site.

He said: “I don’t talk about business life at school. I just mix in with the rest of my class. I don’t find it frustrating to be running my own business one minute and then be sitting in a classroom the next.”

He employs four people, pays himself £500 a month and is saving for a speedboat.

He said: “My advice to anyone who wants to make a success of business is to take an opportunity when it comes, and take risks.”

Garry Adamson, director of commercial services at Southend United, said: “When you do business with Gary Cooper, the first thing you need to do is suspend disbelief.”

GC’s PC’s Ltd’s deal with the Blues, finalised two weeks ago, puts the firm’s name high above the crowds and announces the arrival of a major new business player on the south Essex commercial scene.

Gary can manage his dual life because he has designed GC’s PC’s to run by remote control.

A programme, set up by himself, logs and dispatches sales orders, so that he is constantly on top of figures, anywhere, anytime.

“I have a staff of four,” says the teenager nonchalantly, “who look after the day to day running. I’ve boiled my own input down to very little.

"That leaves me free to oversee major items and move the company forward – and get my school work done.”

Running a business, he believes, is a good way to improve his academic standards.

“It helps to keep me to deadlines. I’m never late handing my work in. It gives me a more mature approach to things, I think, and it means I can contribute more in class discussions.”

Surely, though, school must seem a bit irrelevant to someone who is making more money than the head of the local education authority?

Yet Gary says he has never for a moment been tempted to give up his studies. He is taking four A-levels, in economics, maths, geography and physics.

He then intends to go on to Swansea University for a degree in economics. “It won’t make any difference to the business,” he says. “I can still run it from Wales.

“But I want to get my degree because if I ever go bust in business and I’ve got no qualifications, what will I do?”

Despite Gary’s determination to keep schooling and business in separate departments, it was school that gave him his first opportunity to wheel and deal.

“I was 11 and I wanted to make some proper money,” he recalls.

“At the time, what everyone wanted was flashdisks. I found a supplier, bought them in bulk, and sold them in school for £5 each. I was clearing £20 a week for half an hour’s work.”

The next stage was to open a website, allowing Gary to service a wider market, work from home and make more money than he did from a paper round.

He was 14 now. True to his ability to find bargains, he found a way to set up his original website for just 50p.

The website made £800 profit in its first month of operation. He then added mobile phones to his sales stock and grew the business on the back of his profits.

“So I can say that in two years I’ve built up a company with a six figure turnover on the back of 50p,” he says.

Plenty of other companies sell mobiles and PCs online, of course, but Gary has identified what he himself calls his USP (unique selling point). He offers the most coveted mobiles on the market free from contracts, so that they can be used on a pay-as-you-go basis. Buyers not just in the UK, but also the USA, France, Australia, New Zealand and Norway, have shown just how much demand there is for such deals.

Gary can achieve this special advantage, he says, because he has a knack for “finding the right suppliers”. He believes that there is still plenty of scope for expansion. “We have a long way to grow. The next target is to aim for half a million turnover,” he says.

GC’s PC’s became a limited company early this year.

But Gary is still too young to qualify as a company director. “I had to use somebody else to take on the formal title,” he says. “But as soon as I am 18, the company will be in my name and I will be officially managing director.”

In this and in many other respects he already shows the analytical mind of a professional economist, and the same clarity applies when he talks about his motivation.

As with many self-made people, he is driven by the urge to escape from the relative hardship of his childhood.

His mother has left home, leaving his father to look after Gary and his two siblings. His father worked for York International in Basildon before it closed down. He now works as a gardener.

“We weren’t the richest of families, and I simply wanted more money,” Gary says. “We often couldn’t afford a chocolate bar at the newsagents. I wanted to do something that would let me buy that chocolate bar for myself.”

Gary has had his setbacks. PayPal suddenly froze his account at Christmas, losing the business £20,000.

“They claimed there was unusual activity. Of course there was, it was Christmas,” he snorts.

The business was also hard hit by a heavy theft of stock this month. ‘But you’ve got to learn to be resilient,” he says.

Personally, too, Gary has suffered. He had had to undergo major operations on both his hips.

“And it was bad when mum left home,” he says. But he has a consolation not available to other suffering youngsters.

Once a fortnight, he sits down and completes the accounts for his business. “That’s the best,” he says. “That’s when you see how much money you’re making.”

Gary pays himself £500 a month, for items like chocolate, but he says he finds it hard to spend it all.

He is careful not to be seen throwing this cash around, though he is not above buying his friends a restaurant meal. His first big splurge will come in about a year’s time, when he plans to buy a speedboat.

“I’ll cross the Channel and then some friends and I plan to take it down through the French waterways to the south of France,” he says.

Most of his dreams, though, involve business. He is already planning to invest in another line, luxury car hire. “It’s one of the fastest growing areas of business in the country,” he says.

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