Jennifer Raines, White Label Dating

Jennifer Raines had a stellar challenge ahead of her when she joined Global Personals as their part-time financial director. “Online dating is not something people take very seriously,” she admits.

It was part of Raines’ job to convince the banking world that Global Personals was a credible, booming company, and that’s exactly what she did – along the way negotiating significantly improved payment terms, which slashed finance costs by 20%. She also engineered a restructuring of the company’s finances, releasing £350,000, which oiled the wheels for the acquisition of White Label Dating in 2007.

Yielding results like this, it comes as no surprise that Raines has been working with start-up and turnaround organisations for most of her career. Despite until recently working as a full-time or interim financial director, Raines says there are real benefits in employing part-timers.

“It frees the business owner up to focus on what they’re good at, running their company,” she says, “while not over-burdening them with the cost of hiring someone full-time.”

Despite this, Raines remains humble, pointing out that, with a projected turnover of £5m this year, up from £1.8m in 2007, there is more to White Label Dating’s exponential growth than excellent number crunching. “Not one of us alone could generate this,” she says. “They’ve experienced 400% growth with their ideas, I just facilitate that.”

Company stats Company: White Label Dating Turnover 2006: £900,000 Turnover 2007: £1.8m Web:www.whitelabeldating.com