Craig's Story

Craig Fletcher is an Alumni Member of Vistage and this story relates to his time as a member.

Many of us guiltily daydream our work-life away, wishing we could ditch the day job and focus on making money from our passions. For some of us, these daydreams become reality.

After successfully running a handful of gaming leagues for friends in a hotel, Craig Fletcher saw the potential to turn his hobby into a successful  business.

Since starting, Multiplay continued to grow, requiring larger venues and more staff. By 2012, as the business began to ramp up, Craig was starting to struggle with juggling the many aspects of running a business. He explains that, “It was a particularly rough time, I was doing 43 hours of finance each week, as well as trying to run and grow the business.”

“I’ve never had a speaker session where I didn’t gain at least one great thing to take away and learn from.”

To get help working on the financial side of the business, Craig worked with The FD Centre. Through this connection, he was referred to an Experience Vistage session at a Vistage Open Day. He notes wryly that, “Every single person in the group voted to process my issue and I got properly grilled!” 

Despite (or, perhaps, because of) the grilling,  he joined his local Vistage group, chaired by Neil

Wilkie. Neil and the other Vistage group members were able to share ideas and process issues whilst holding Craig to account.

“It’s a great confidential environment where you can open up and talk about things you don’t talk about with anyone else, especially in a family business.” 

Using the knowledge shared from his Vistage group and the expert speakers, Craig began to have more time to focus fully on growing the business. “I’ve never had a speaker session where I didn’t gain at least one great thing to take away and learn from.”

“We want to throw rocket fuel at the company and push it even further!”

Since forming in 1997, Multiplay has grown to have over 100 employees running a variety of events including Insomnia, the biggest gaming festival in the UK with a footfall of 35,000 people. “It’s very easy to keep a culture when you have 30 employees, that gets a lot harder when you have 50, 100, 150 people.”

Craig’s Vistage group has continued to support and hold him to account even as the company has developed. The culmination of Multiplay’s growth came in 2015 when the company was acquired by GAME for £20m. “There was a lot of stress and learning that went on in the process and the help of Vistage was needed more than ever.”

Looking to the future, Craig is confident about how Multiplay can continue to grow with the support of Vistage. “We doubled turnover and headcount last year but we want to throw rocket fuel at the company and push it even further!”