How a British Tech Brand Can Maintain Category Leading Position and Continued Growth by Investing in the UK People and Infrastructure

By Richard Browning, Director of Nextbase

Nextbase is a privately-owned British consumer technology company and we are proud to say we are bucking the usual tech trend, by investing local in UK-based infrastructure, staff and R&D. As Brexit approaches and COVID continues to affect our everyday lives, we believe, as a British brand, it is important not just talk about our British heritage, but actually invest local, and support UK businesses and workforces during these hard times.

The global Dash Cam market is one of the fastest growing consumer technology categories in the world, and has continued to expand rapidly, with our key competitors in tech hubs such as Japan and the US. Even after nearly a year of COVID, it is still expected to reach a total market size of US$7.5bn by 2027. This might be surprising to some as we enter another lockdown. However, as public transport becomes less desirable, and travel by privately owned cars become the preferred choice, we are already seeing a rise in demand, and more important than ever, a demand for vehicular safety. Combine that with favourable government initiatives and increasing product capabilities, you can understand why the market is not slowing down.

Despite some big competitors, we are proud to say we are the category leader in the Dash Cam sector with market share of 80% in the UK and 50% in Europe and we are already a market leader in the US, where we only recently launched. We expect a similar growth and share pattern is anticipated in new territories around the world. A British brand, still based in Britain, dominating in the tech sector – not something you hear every day.

Richard Browning

We believe our successful growth has been attributed to our award-winning, clear category leading technology, where we created British products that are unique in the market place due to their advanced feature set. During the pandemic we also invested in broadening our range of models to cater for all type of motorists and requirements, as well as innovative sales and marketing strategies. A good example of this is that we launched our top of the range, most advanced products the Nextbase 6222GW in August, right in the middle of the pandemic. This product has quickly gone on to become one of our bestselling lines, as consumers look to spend their increased disposable income from not going on holiday or spending on social activities.

Partnerships and supporting other UK brands were also key to securing our market leading position, and we worked hard to forge partnerships with national UK retailers including Halfords, Argos and Curry’s. As well as investing in UK retail, in 2014, we pioneered an industry-first collaboration with UK insurance company Swiftcover. Our deal gave back to the UK customers purchasing an insurance premium through the insurer a 12.5% discount on their quote if they owned a Nextbase dash cam. Since then, various other insurance providers have followed suit and in turn, we transformed the world of Dash Cams for consumers around the world.

This year has been a challenging year for all brands. However, as a business it has forced us to increase our efficiency and focus on shifting consumer behaviour. We brought forward a new website launch, investing heavily in UK developed digital content to assist the consumer in gaining quick product knowledge – we have also launched a full direct consumer offering.

COVID or Brexit is not slowing us down, and we will be using a recent round of investment to further strengthen our UK base to accelerate expansion and the develop more cutting-edge new technologies, including 4G/5G functionality.

Our success in driving and evolving the Dash Cam category over the past five years has given us a very strong, market-leading position on which to build further.  We are proud to say our revenue has grown by over 30% per annum in each of the last five years and will be approximately £62m for the FY19-20 financial year.