How a young entrepreneur took his home-based translations business into the international arena

With nothing more than a networked computer, a good idea and some entrepreneurial nous, businesses of all sizes can ‘go global’ and broaden their commercial scope to potential clients in hundreds of countries.

However, it’s crucial that you don’t try to grow too big too quickly. This is one of the biggest mistakes many new start-ups make and is a sure fire way of dwindling all that precious start-up cash.

Armed with a degree in French and Italian, Christian Arno’s zeal for language and a passion for e-business led the young entrepreneur to launch his home-based translation service - Lingo24 - just a few months after graduating in 2001.

A shrewd five hundred pound investment of his student loan on the stock market yielded a return of £15k, which provided Arno with the funds to build the company’s website and infrastructure. The main goal was to build the company into one of the top brands in translation and he did so initially from a spare room in his parental home in Aberdeen.

“Whilst it was great to have such a short commute to the office”, says Arno, “the main advantage was there was no overheads for premises. I could offer big clients prices up to a third less than other translation companies.”

This allowed Lingo24 to grow a lot quicker and in 2003 he launched another ‘virtual office’ in New Zealand, then in China in 2004. Both bases were staffed by home-workers which, again, helped to keep costs down.

Arno says, “We employed some very talented personnel in China and New Zealand, and having operations in multiple time-zones meant we had global coverage ’round-the-clock’. When our UK people clocked-off, we simply passed control over to our other hubs. It worked out very well for us.”

Having capacity in multiple time-zones was pivotal to Lingo24 ‘going global’, and they then launched their first ‘bricks and mortar’ office in Romania in 2005, then Panama in 2008 and Edinburgh in August of the same year.

“The key to internationalising a business is to follow a ‘carefully managed growth’ model”, says Arno. “Do things in stages. Build up one part of the business and then move on to the next. Before you look to build business in other countries, you’re best having a robust domestic business with a core client base and a steady revenue stream. With this in place, you can identify opportunities in other key markets around the world. Growing too quickly can be disastrous for new businesses - so don’t get too carried away with your first few sales!”

Carefully managed growth has been a key contributing factor to Lingo24’s success. Moreover, Arno’s realisation that the foreign language internet is the best way to tap into new and emerging markets was also vital:

“75% of the Earth’s population don’t speak English”, says Arno. “Those that do speak English as a second tongue still prefer to do business in their native language. With this in mind, I adapted Lingo24’s website and had it translated into ten or so other languages in our key target countries. Clients in Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands or Japan could then see that we were serious about what we do. We spoke their language.”

Home-working and carefully managed growth can help the smallest of businesses globalise their services.  With multilingual websites and staff in multiple time-zones, small and medium-sized companies can go global.

About Lingo24

Lingo24 is a translations company that translated over thirty million words in 2009, covering clients in over sixty countries and every industry sector. Turnover in the twelve months to September 2009 was £3.65m.