UNDER THE RADAR KARACHA.COM:WHEN HE was in his early teens, Adam Ewart tried his hand at starting a number of businesses. Back when mobile phones weren't the ubiquitous tools they are today, he tried to set up an internet business which involved taking people's old phones and reselling them online.

He also had an idea for an internet recruitment firm.

"I had no real computer know-how and I had no real money behind them, so nothing really worked," says Ewart.

Fast forward 10 years and Ewart (23) runs two internet-based businesses - Karacha.com and sendmybag.com.

It was Ewart's love of music and fondness for dabbling in trading music books on eBay which led him to launch Karacha, an online music shop, in November 2004. It sells instruments, accessories and sheet music.

"I'm a saxophone player, and I realised there weren't really any good online music shops," he says. "Music shops tended to be small, local, family-run affairs as opposed to large chains of music shops, which meant that no big company had really thrown £50,000 to have an all-singing, all-dancing website designed, whereas there was pretty much every other retail shop on the net."

The Bangor, Co Down, native was still at college so the venture was set up on a shoestring.

"It was really difficult getting accounts with distributors. Nobody was really keen to sell to new music shops unless you were ready to throw a lot of money at it and open a really big music shop."

Luckily for Ewart, a local shop owner for whom he worked helped him out.

"He let me have a little corner of his shop to have the music products on display, which helped me get the accounts which allowed me to sell them online as well."

At this stage he was operating the online business from a spare bedroom in his parents' house. A hallway full of musical paraphernalia was not an uncommon sight in the Ewart household back then.

"I had 2,500 music books lying in the hall at one stage," he recalls.

"I had bought out the contents of a music shop that had gone bankrupt in London, and I got them all shipped over and I got them at a really good price."

That proved to be his big break.

"The money I got from them allowed me to pay a few thousand pounds to have a first decent website designed. I had designed one myself, but it was really terrible. It looked like a bad Word document."

When he graduated from college, Ewart was able to immerse himself full time in the business, and he acquired a unit in an enterprise centre in Bangor.

It appears to be paying off. In 2004, the business had sales of about £7,000 (€8,716). Last year Ewart says he did £100,000 worth of business and, on current monthly sales figures, he expects turnover to top £500,000 this year.

To back up his growing sales volumes, Ewart has begun the process of hiring additional staff. But to run an online music business, he says you need more than salespeople - you need experts in various musical fields.

"You need people who are in the local bands, playing in orchestras that have their finger on the pulse. I'm hiring people like that."

It's obvious that a man who spent his teens dreaming up business ventures wasn't going to let another business opportunity pass. That opportunity came when he was helping his girlfriend move her luggage back from Oxford at the end of a college term in 2006.

"I paid for a ticket over to England and a ticket back, and we had a £50 excess baggage charge at Heathrow. I spent the best part of £250 in going over to essentially help her bring back two extra boxes. I felt this was madness."

So he set up a new online business called sendmybag.com, a 48-hour courier delivery service tailored to the student market.

It will pick up students' bags by courier and will guarantee delivery to a university hall of residence or alternative accommodation within 48 hours.

That business is ticking over nicely, he says, but for the moment he's happy to concentrate on scaling up Karacha.

"Something like 15 million people in the UK play musical instruments at some time in their life, and five million people actively lift up an instrument once a week.

"Next year I want Karacha to do over £1 million, which it will with the way it is going at the moment."

ON THE RECORD
Name:Adam Ewart
From:Bangor,
Co Down.
Age:23
Background:BA in ancient history and archaeology from Queen's University, Belfast. "I was always interested in history. I knew I was going to set up a business, so the degree was irrelevant. I picked the one I wanted to do."
Most likes:"A wee wander down to the pub and going to the cinema."
Favourite book:"I read a lot of autobiographies."