New taxi firm called Phoenix Cars opens for business in Gosport

Business partners Graham Barclay and Kam Sheanhmar say they have been overwhelmed at the support they have received after setting up Phoenix Cars Gosport for themselves.

The pair were working at Bridge Cars Ltd in Gosport but when it was announced that the business was being sold on to Aqua Cars, they decided to take a leap of faith and start their own business – and it has paid off.

Graham said: ‘For me in particular, I have been in the taxi industry for 38 years and for most of that I have been a manager working in a company for somebody else and for the last eight years, when I met Kam, she has been working in the same company and then we got to the point where the company that we worked for, which was a very nice company, was being sold to Aqua Cars.

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‘I am 69 years old and I never really wanted to open a company of my own but I had Kam back my idea and we spoke with a lot of people and decided to do it.’

A number of employees, who were working alongside the business partners, also decided to leave and join the new business.

Kam said: ‘Small businesses have been backing us, we have seen this up and down the country, the big businesses muscle in. It seems to be a mirror across the country – we know our customers.

‘You become just a number and some of the vulnerable people that we deal with need the same face otherwise it can be scary for them, but that is what we offer our customers. We know a lot of them by their names. Do you think you will get that from big companies?’

The staff at the new company all have access to their systems from the comfort of their homes. Phoenix Cars began trading officially on April 11, .