At 15, he is set to go global

From the Swindon Advertiser, first published Thursday 20th Apr 2000.

A WHEELING and dealing schoolboy from Cricklade ­ who once sold tap water to thirsty football team-mates ­ has aspirations to become one of Britain's youngest millionaires.

Alex Tew, 15, says he has always been an entrepreneur and has now set up a new Internet site with his older brother, Mike.

The site gives listings for all the major UK and Ireland music festivals and already receives more than 1,000 hits a day, despite only having been online for three weeks.

The brothers plan to expand the site to cover European festivals and eventually, the world.

They are currently trying to set up Bigfestivals.com as a limited company and are in talks with some major sponsors.

Alex works on the site at weekends from his home in Bath Road, Cricklade.

And he recently bought a new computer so he can maintain the site in the evenings at Sexey's Boarding School in Somerset.

But the young businessman first has the distraction of GCSE exams, which are less than a fortnight away.

We came up with the original concept last year with musicfestivals.net, which was a small site but quite successful, he said.

So we decided to re-brand with a bigger site and it's going so well, we hope to expand into Europe soon.

We're very close to sealing a major deal, and then we will start making real money.

He said people have described him as an entrepreneur ever since he sold home-made comics at school.

His most impressive sales feat came when his PE teacher refused to let the class take drinks to the school field for a football match. Alex smuggled over some water and sold it to his friends.

He is almost entirely self-taught in web-design, having learned the basics at school.

He says the partnership with Mike works well, with the 23-year-old concentrating on the marketing side of the venture.

If the business does go global in the future, Alex says taking on staff would be necessary.

He loves music, especially dance, club culture, underground and drum and bass.

But perhaps the biggest surprise is that he is yet to have been to a festival himself ­ his first is next month in Winchester.

I'm just like any other teenager, he said. I want to get my exams out the way to do what I enjoy ­ and that's business and music.

The site can be found at www.bigfestivals.com.

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