People: Earning his bouquets

Graham Storey, the entrepreneur who is working to take bombed-out sensor systems specialist Transense Technologies into the black, declares, ‘I had never bought a share until a friend suggested Transense.’ His biggest previous business coup was turning round a tropical plant rental company and taking upmarket florist Moyses Stevens, holder of three royal warrants, to the point where a fund headed by Andrew Hoffmann of the Swiss drugs group Hoffmann-La Roche bought it for £3.5 million.

Storey took the helm at AIM-quoted Transense after a shareholder revolt two years ago at the fallen stock market high-flyer. He has lately been visiting Toronto, Detroit and Chile to clinch deals for the loss-making company, whose technology measures torque, pressure and temperature, with applications in the automotive and industrial fields.

According to Storey, Oxfordshire-based Transense’s Translogik subsidiary’s tyre pressure monitoring systems can save operators of the massive and costly vehicles used in mining and heavy industry serious amounts of money and tyre tread.

He is determined that the company will not repeat past mistakes of signing up to exclusivity deals with large concerns without minimum guaranteed payments.

Storey does not need to work, but says he enjoys the ‘cut and thrust of doing a good deal. It’s business that gets me up
in the morning.’