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“I realised I wanted my company to be a sustainable and ethical business, but at that point I didn’t have the idea”
“It worked out pretty well really, because it meant we didn’t get taxed on anything,” jokes Bowen. The merchandising business fizzled out during sixth form as Bowen decided to dedicate a bit of time to furthering his education. However, it was in the time Bowen took travelling around the world between school and university that he really started to formulate the idea for Geco Industries. “Going round seeing different cultures makes you start to appreciate that business is a lot bigger than you realise,” he says. “You have got to have a real purpose.” And the year Bowen spent working for global healthcare firm GlaxoSmithKline truly opened his eyes to the type of enterprise he wanted to build, even if he didn’t have the specifics in place quite
yet. “It was there that I realised I wanted my company to be a sustainable and ethical business, but at that point I didn’t have the idea,” he recounts. “Basically, I had a vision in place before I even had a product. I knew what I wanted the business to be and made sure that people knew that so if they saw any opportunities, we could have a look at them.” Fortunately for Bowen, his father had encountered a South African woman named Mariette Hopley while on a shark fishing trip in the Rainbow Nation. She had developed an ethanol gel to be used as fuel in African townships. It was smokeless, non-toxic, non-explosive and clean-burning, and as soon as Bowen saw it, he knew he had discovered a product that matched his business vision. Hopley was equally convinced by Bowen’s grand plans and on May 20, 2011 – the day of Bowen’s last exam at Sheffield Hallam University – Geco Industries was born. While the name of the new enterprise may not seem all that revolutionary – Geco being a blend of the words ‘green’ and ‘eco’ – Bowen admits that it took some time to nail down, not least because the decision would ultimately shape the company’s future. “It is crazy how much you start thinking about a name,” he recalls. Eventually though, Bowen was content that the brand name reflected what his venture was all about. “Our remit is to make alternative energy affordable as a business, which means we have to be green and eco, and eco means not just environmentally friendly but economically friendly.” The name of Geco’s flagship bio-ethanol gel product, Fuel4, was subject to an equally rigorous thought process. However, the brand name simply reflects the four attributes (smokeless, non-toxic, nonexplosive and clean-burning) that differentiate the product from other fuels that are causing the ill Bowen set out to cure. “The original problem was the two million deaths a year from indoor air pollution,” he says. “And that is very much within the third world, so things like paraffin and kerosene cause huge problems with fumes and with burns because of the liquid spilling, but also from people collecting wood. Women and children are going out for eight hours a day collecting wood to cook with, which doesn’t make any sense.”
www.elitebusinessmagazine.co.uk July 2013
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28/06/2013 21:08