Two Shropshire companies have been named among the 100 small businesses in the UK to be celebrated by Small Business Saturday, the campaign that culminates in the UK’s dedicated day for small businesses on December 3rd.
The businesses will be among those featured one per day for the 100 days leading up to Small Business Saturday itself.
The local companies are:
Stepping Into Business, a social enterprise based in Morville, near Bridgnorth, which works with children and young people to help them to learn about business and enterprise. It was set up in one school in 2013 after teacher Dylan McCarthy asked parents help children in his class understand why making a cake for 50p and selling it for 20p did not make good business sense. Donna Irving, who was teaching economics at Manchester Metropolitan University at the time after a career as a chartered accountant devised the programme trialled in that school.
Other schools liked it, seeing the benefits it offered pupils. Three years on and the company is now working with 55 schools, and the third team member, Dinah Turner, is working on an app to spread the skills more widely.
“Children and young people will be setting up the businesses of the future, be they big or small, and we want to help them in that,” explains Dinah.
“Employers tell us young people aren’t always work ready, and we know teachers can find the world of business and work complex and hard to teach. So to help fix all that, we run training programmes for teachers, we work to connect schools with local businesses and give more children access to resources to help them experience business in a fun and exciting way. The children we work with are super-motivated by trying business out for real, and we love working with them and their teachers.”
The second local business is Pop-up Pitch, a business that has created a pop-up extension to the traditional market in Wellington specifically to showcase start-ups and local small businesses in a specially designed trading area. It features artisan goods, music, street performance, street food, local ales and spirits alongside fitness, upcycled goods, handmade jewellery and other local services. Launched by entrepreneur Fay Easton, Pop-up Pitch believes in the power of local spend and local people to help regenerate their own towns and high streets..
“Customers want to see, try, smell and taste,” explains Fay.
“Supporting small, local businesses keeps more money in the local economy and shoppers can directly support their own towns simply by shopping with local traders. This is ‘personality shopping’ where you meet the seller. Everything from fashion, food, art and beauty to technology, health, homeware and even legal services can be found on the Pop-up Pitches We’re aiming to back 100 new businesses and provide over 1000 new trading days for local entrepreneurs this year.”
Small Business Saturday is already the UK’s most successful small business campaign. This is the fourth year of the campaign, which last year saw £623m spent with small businesses across the UK on Small Business Saturday, an increase of £119m or 24 per cent on the previous year. The campaign trended at number one in the UK on Twitter on the day with more than 100,000 campaign-related tweets being sent. Over 75% of local councils supported the campaign, giving considerable national reach into local communities.
The campaign is a great nationwide promotional and marketing tool for small businesses. It is totally free to participate and any small businesses can get involved – from one-man-bands, through to a high growth office, and from tradesmen to social media gurus. In addition to the big day, the campaign also delivers help and advice alongside opportunities to connect with other small businesses. In short, Small Business Saturday exists to support, inspire and promote small businesses.
“The British public has a great affection for small businesses and we continue to see that grow year on year. Small Business Saturday is an exceptional example of collaboration and co-operation with small businesses teaming up in communities around the UK,” explains Campaign Director Michelle Ovens.
“Although the campaign focuses on one day, the goal is to have a lasting impact on small businesses by changing mind-sets, so that people make it their mission to support small businesses all year round. Most people in this country own a small business, work for a small business or know somebody who does, so supporting a small business on Small Business Saturday is absolutely personal.”