Congratulations to former student James Markey who won the Young Business Person of the Year Award at the Gloucestershire Live Business Awards. We sat down with the Managing Director of Nutrition X to learn more about him and his life since leaving school...

Hi James, congratulations on you award win! Let's take it back to the start, when were you at King's?

I was at King’s all the way through Junior and Senior School, I left Upper Sixth in 2006. Can’t remember what year I started, it was that long ago!

Which house were you in?

Serlo

What are your favourite memories from your time at King's?

Definitely playing sport, particularly rugby and cricket. The sports tours were the best; I was lucky enough to go on rugby tour to Ireland and a hockey tour to South Africa. I also have to say that the teachers at King’s were great too!

What did you do after leaving school?

I went on a gap year organised through the school to St Andrews Cathedral School in Sydney. This was an unbelievable experience, coaching sport and travelling around Australia and New Zealand in the holidays.

What are you up to these days?

Aside from managing Nutrition X, I got married last year, I play golf (badly), keep fit generally and travel a lot with work and for pleasure.

Tell us all about your Career path:

I started working in the family businesses (The Markey Group), whilst completing a sports coaching degree at Gloucestershire University. As I finished my degree, I decided to try to combine my two passions: sport / coaching with my newfound passion of business from working in the family company for 3 years. I began selling different brands of sports nutrition products to friends and local sports teams between May 2011 and August 2012. From there, a brand called Nutrition X contacted me to see if I would help them bring their brand from Ireland to mainland UK, and I jumped at the opportunity. In early 2014, I acquired the brand Nutrition X from the company in Ireland and ever since then we have been trying to grow the brand to positively impact the highest performing athletes around the world.

How does it feel to have won the Young Business Person of the Year Award at the Gloucestershire Live Business Awards?

A bit surreal if I am honest, there were so many fantastic companies in the room on the night. However, I feel a bit of a fraud taking an individual award as we have such a great team at Nutrition X, meaning we couldn’t be where we are today without so many people.

Nevertheless, it is a huge honour and always nice to receive recognition like this, as it gives me the drive to keep progressing the brand to new heights.

Tell us about Nutrition X. Why do you think that they, and you, are an award winning company?

This one is easy… having a clear vision and sticking to it. We have focused on a very niche part of a highly competitive market (professional sport within the overall sports nutrition / supplement market), and this has enabled us to keep our business plan and model very simple.

Nutrition X, is a sports nutrition brand, providing scientific and safe sports nutrition products to high performing sports athletes. We believe in providing education and advice alongside the products and we are constantly improving our offering to ensure we maintain and increase the impact we can have on an athlete’s nutrition to ultimately improve their performance, health, and wellbeing.

What does the future hold?

In work we are continuing to improve our offering, our service and what we stand for. We have recently launched a second branch and warehouse in Ireland ‘Nutrition X Europe’ to help us support athletes across Europe. We are also exploring distribution options outside of Europe, including our first signed agreement in the Middle East. We have a couple of other projects launching in early 2023 that we are really excited about!

Outside of work I will be spending time with family, friends and our little puppy Maple, with a bit of travelling in between.

And finally, if you could give one piece of advice to the current crop of sixth formers about to join the real world, what would it be?

You have plenty of time to find your passion and try lots of things, you don’t have to land the dream job straight out of school. However, just remember that time is non-renewable so don’t waste your time generally, approach everything with purpose and drive, every opportunity is a chance to gain experience.

Thank you James, congratulations again and good luck in the future!