September 27, 2017
Small businesses are quite simply the backbone of the UK economy.
According to the FSB, small businesses accounted for 99.3% of all private sector businesses at the start of 2016. SMEs account for 60% of all private sector employment in the UK and have a combined annual turnover of £1.8 trillion – 47% of all private sector turnover in the UK.
This is extremely impressive and we want to help small businesses grow even more. Whether that’s selling to large retailers on Britain’s high streets or exporting to other countries.
Of course our standards are key to the success of any small businesses to upscale their activities. Our standards make the supply chain more efficient and effective. They enable you to better manage your product data and many large businesses require you to use our standards before you can even begin to trade with them.
But we want to give the UK’s army of small businesses even more support and that’s why we are teaming up with The Great British Exchange (GBE) to host a one-day workshop on Friday 13 October to go through some tactics to help small businesses upscale their activities.
Tickets were snapped up straight away for what we hope is the first workshop of many and we’re expecting around 60 SMEs on the day for the sell-out event.
And to kick things off at the inaugural workshop, we are privileged to be partnering with one of the UK’s most prestigious and recognisable high street brands – John Lewis.
Our friends at John Lewis are hosting the event at their distribution centre in Milton Keynes and on the day, in addition to networking with other small businesses, SMEs will be able to hear from Fiona Carr, owner of the Harrogate Candle Company, about how her journey from city worker to small business owner.
Participants will also have the opportunity to take a tour of John Lewis’s distribution centre and topics to be discussed on the day include:
- How to get ready to trade with a high street retailer, like John Lewis
- Properly managing your product data
- Opportunities for British-made products
And as an added bonus, we’re pleased to be welcoming the Department for International Trade (DIT) and their Export Hub. The Hub has travelled across the UK and seen over 6,000 businesses attend events, seminars and trade shows, and over a networking lunch, SMEs can meet one of their experts to help them sell their products to international markets.
This is going to be a fantastic event, providing real value to small business, and we hope this is going to be the first of many for GS1 UK and GBE.
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