Every day, up to 1,000 mobile phones arrive at the Morecambe offices of Mazuma Mobile.
Craig Smith is group managing director at Mazuma and data erasure specialist ICT Reverse, which have a combined turnover of more than £50m.
The entrepreneur has earned the nickname ‘Mr Mobile’ and is the latest guest on The Naked Founder podcast.
Smith, who celebrates his 55th birthday today (August 25), showed his entrepreneurial flair from an early age, running a couple of betting books at school.
He landed a warehouse job paying £100 a week but gave it up to become an office junior at British Fuels, despite it paying just £28 a week.
“The reason I took the job in the office was because I wanted to understand how business worked,” he said.
“People asked me why I’d given up a better paid job but I could see the bigger picture.”
At the age of 24, he moved to London to work at Orange, where he met his future business partner Simon Walsh.
“At the time Orange was the new kid on the block,” he said. “It was all about coverage. There was no data. The phones were the size of breeze blocks.
“Our job was to sell mobiles into corporates. Initially, when mobiles came out it was only the senior managers who would get them.
“The technology was moving so quickly that many handsets became redundant very quickly and that was the opportunity that we saw.”
Together with Walsh, he launched ShP, which stood for ‘Second Hand Phones’.
The company specialised in cleaning data from unwanted computers and mobile phones before selling them on. It was initially based in a storage unit in Wimbledon before relocating to Lancashire.
ICT Reverse hits record £11.8m turnover
ShP grew turnover to around £4m and secured former Director General of the CBI Lord Digby Jones as an adviser for free.
They met him at an HSBC competition in Shanghai, China, where the former Minister of State for Trade handed his business card to the founders.
At one point, tech giant Exertis looked set to buy ShP, but the deal never happened and Smith and Walsh parted company soon afterwards.
“We agreed to go our separate ways but in a good way,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be acrimonious and it wasn’t. Simon works in mobile and we’re still very much in touch.”
ShP initially focused primarily on second-hand phones but expanded its recycling services to include IT equipment such as laptops.
Following a rebrand to ICT Reverse in January 2016, the company was purchased a year later in a multi-million-pound deal by the Eco-Renew Group.
ICT Reverse now forms part of the Mazuma Group, with Smith serving as group MD.
Smith said: “I’ve worked in mobile all my life. Mazuma is handling up to 1,000 phones a day. The average payment we make per phone is £250. We try and improve them, fix them and resell them. It’s all part of the circular economy.”
In the 12 months to the end of March 2026, ICT Reverse reported record turnover of £11.8m – a 32 per cent increase year-on-year.
Mazuma had a five-year partnership as stadium sponsor of Morecambe FC’s ground, while Smith remains passionate about supporting the local community.
He is also a finalist in the EY Entrepreneur of the Year (North region).
The Naked Founder is sponsored by Financielle and produced by Dan Brown of Renowned.
You can listen to the latest episode of The Naked Founder podcast here
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