Gold Coast City’s best and brightest young business leaders were showcased at The Gold Coast Young Entrepreneur of the Year Awards last week.

The annual awards, hosted by Gold Coast Business News, were held at The Arts Centre Gold Coast on Friday 22 November. Each year, trophies are awarded to the overall winner, highly commended, and trailblazer. All finalists are some of the brightest business leaders in Gold Coast City, and are aged 40 or under.

Last year, Randall Deer was awarded the top prize for the second year running. Randall, the founder of Ignite Travel Group, built an international marketing empire that operates in Broadbeach, Sydney, New Zealand and South Africa.

This year, Ron Bakir took out the title of Gold Coast Young Entrepreneur of the Year. Ron previously owned Gold Coast-based Crazy Ron’s mobile phone retail chain, and became a property manager in 2004. His company HomeCorp Group has developed more than 1500 residential lots across Australia and has increased turnover by 34 per cent since last year.

Ron said he has always had a passion for business and a desire to create.

“I’ve always had something there for property,” he said.

“I bought a property and I built a house on it and I thought it was great, so there we went.”

View Ron’s full interview here: www.vimeo.com/80128375

Stuart Stratton was awarded the Highly Commended prize for his endeavours in a diverse range of industries, including airport and theme park transfers, finance broking, debt consolidation, field marketing and even solar hot water systems. Stuart’s two main businesses are airport and theme park transfer company Con-x-ion, and communication business Bsmart.

The TrailBlazer award went to Jason Ganis of SmartPrint Fleet Management, iFish, and Finance and Print Security. SmartPrint is one of the largest and fastest growing print companies in Australia, and the first in Australia founded exclusively for the purpose of printer fleet management and managed print services.

The finalists have managed to increase revenue more than $60 million over the 2012-13 financial year. Combined, they generate more than $240 million in annual revenue, and employ more than 700 staff.

To read more about the inspiring finalists, pick up a copy of the November issue of Gold Coast Business News.

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