Jason Hadlow has hopes of being accelerated

Jason Hadlow founded Bring Buy Sell at Crockey Hill, which he calls a cross between e-Bay and TK Maxx, where members of the public or small businesses can take their goods to be sold for them in the 10,000 sq ft store.

The store launched earlier this month and Jason said they have items to fit out a whole house, ideal for penny-pinching new home owners, buy-to-let landlords and students.

He said: “We have everything from bicycles to four-poster beds and pine wardrobes. We have half the contents of a Jacobean mansion that has been cleared out, as well as professional catering cookers and ovens and fridges and freezers.

Jason launched the York store after regional development agency funding of £150,000 to set up a chain of hundreds of stores was pulled. Now Jason is building the business as a franchise, one store at a time.

He said: “We decided to launch a new superstore with nothing more than £15,000 we scraped together from friends and family.

“We may have created a retail revolution, but we need help and expert mentoring and free advertising will help us achieve our goal of 200 stores in five years,” he said.

The Press has appointed local business mentors Stephen Kennedy, chief operating officer of CPP; Dr Paul Gibson, chief executive of PureNet and Katie Stewart, head of economic development at City of York Council to help judge the Local Business Accelerators competition, and to provide mentoring support to three local companies the judges feel have the most potential to grow their business with free advertising in The Press.

Local Business Aceelerators is a national competition being run with 500 local and regional newspapers taking part. From all the regional winners, one lucky winner nationally will win the prize of being mentored by LBA's national ambassador, Deborah Meaden.

Enter at accelerateme.co.uk before November 14, to be in with a chance to win mentoring and free advertising.