We are delighted to announce that Age Check Certification Services Ltd are the 10th winners of the Export Action Plan competition. They take home the £3000 cash prize sponsored by Bibby Financial Services.
We spoke to their CEO, Tony Allen, about his company’s exports and how it felt to win the competition.
Company name: Age Check Certification Services Ltd
Website: https://accscheme.co.uk/
Representative: Tony Allen
How does it feel to win the competition?
We are delighted to have won the competition; the Export Action Plan is a really useful tool that has allowed us to clearly identify the steps in our exporting journey. As a provider of third-party certification of age check equipment and practices in the UK, our next step is to expand our footprint overseas. We are breaking new ground in this really important field where we were able to come up with a really inventive strategy and we’re proud that our plan was recognised as the best by the judges.
What does your company do at the moment and what’s next?
We provide independent third-party certification of age check equipment and practices. Our next step is to expand our coverage overseas.
How are the exports going?
We’re at a relatively early stage of the exporting process at the moment but the early signs are positive and we’re looking forward to success in the not too distant future.
How has the Export Action Plan helped with your exports?
The Export Action Plan helped us to prepare and to consider some of the key initiatives that we need to work on.
How have you found the experience of the final today?
It was a really positive and helpful experience – it’s always good to present to a different audience.
What tips would you give to other new exporters?
It’s not the big things that trip you up, it’s the small, mundane, everyday things.
About Age Check Certification Services Ltd
We are the Age Check Certification Scheme. We check the age gateways online and offline for providers of age restricted goods, content or services. These could be alcohol, tobacco, gambling, adult content or many other restricted items. Our mission is to help protect the children of the world from the harms associated with access to age restricted goods, content or services.
Our state-of-the-art test purchasing app utilised by our panel of mystery shoppers can be utilised for testing physical locations or domains. It gathers an auditable assessment of the age gateways put in place to challenge young customers for ID or to ensure that online customers are subject to appropriate age verification. Linked to our E-Cert Certification Management System, our reports provide robust monitoring evidence for companies to use as evidence for regulators or law enforcement officers.
As age restrictions pervade around the world – and are getting stricter – we believe that our Export Action Plan we see the existence of Age Check Certification as a worldwide deployment, all in accordance with International Standards. Our methodology is easy to deploy, but challenging for a competitor to replicate. We aim to establish Age Check Certification in the G20 within five years.
It doesn’t matter what the restricted product is, where it is being sold, the channel it is being sold through or the method of delivery – ultimately the rules are the same worldwide – is this customer/user old enough to access this product, content or service? The methodologies being deployed to answer that question require validation and endorsement to be trusted by stakeholders. Be it age assessment by primary ID (like a driving licence), age estimation AI, ID scanning tools, social proofing or many other methods – we provide the independent 3rd party assurance that they work.
