Enterprise Nation Birmingham May and June Highlights

 There is no such thing as a routine Enterprise Nation meet up when Debbie Assinder is the organiser. For May's meet up Debbie arranged a visit to Enterprise Nation member and champion Rosie Ginday's wonderful boutique shop Miss Macaroon in the Great Western Arcade in Birmingham.

As you will note from the photo below what makes Miss Macaroon extra special is that it combines producing outstanding luxurious quality macaroons with its social enterprise values.

Ocia below left, is a star graduate of Miss Macaroon's training scheme helping those overcome difficult experiences and it was a joy to hear her talk about all her new skills, confidence and enjoyment from being part of Miss Macaroon.

On the business side Miss Macaroon is thriving on some big name corporate clients such as Karl Lagerfeld who is a regular customer of some super stylish personalised macaroons.

Can you spot founder Rosie Gindlay in amongst the portraits below?

Miss Macaroon are fantastic at marketing the brand and are always trying new activities for promotion. Francesca Chong headed to the Bullring in June to run an eye-catching boutique pop-up hosted by Appear Here 

Elyssa Horton talked about the collaboration with Blow Ltd the Uber of the beauty world delivering beauty services direct to your home or office.

 After a successful launch night in May the Blow team are back on Friday July 14th offering free makeovers and up-dos with every £5 spend. Add in a glass of prosecco and some exclusive ice creams and it's the perfect way to start your weekend off with some fun. 

Grab a free ticket here: Miss Macaroon x Blow Ltd Summer Beauty Blow Out

Taste the rainbow.

Miss Macaroon is a wonderful example of the talented and inspiring members of Enterprise Nation who benefit from supporting each other's success through sharing skills and meeting up at networking events.

June Meetup

In June Debbie treated us to a trip to the Jewellery Quarter and the very sophisticated surroundings of Assay Studios "A creative place for curious minds".

Assay Studios Manager Ally Mitchell told us that the building founded in 1877 was home to the Assay Office for over 130 years and used to hallmark millions of precious items a year. One can picture the safe below full of glorious silver items.

The great Matthew Boulton played a big part in petitioning parliament to establish Birmingham's first Assay Office in the 1770s.

Nowadays it's where the top talent of Birmingham's tech and creative community hangout.

Glide up the beautiful Victorian staircase and you will find plush offices aplenty.

All that's missing is Sherlock Holmes smoking a pipe.

Assay Studios is home to John Lewis Tech and Deliveroo so there is a tremendous energy and momentum in the building.

The offices range from 300 to 10000sq foot

 We all loved the period details.

You can't find a 'safer' meeting place.

She Means Business in Birmingham

 Debbie had the female entrepreneurs of the West Midlands scrambling to write notes about places on Enterprise Nation's forthcoming trade missions to New York and Singapore potentially being partly sponsored by the local DTI.

Everyone's favourite social media guru David Glenwright gave expert tips and insight on making the most out of Facebook for your business.

Top Facebook Stats

1) In 2017 Facebook has 2bn users.

2) Daily active users open Facebook 14 times a day and spend 4 minutes on average browsing.

3) The optimum number of times a business should post a week is 3-5 times.

4) Videos get 2.5 times more engagement than text posts. Longer videos attract more people.

5) 60% of Facebook users are mobile only.

Top Facebook Tips

1) Choose a good profile photo as it will appear on every single post you make. Your logo or image should be clean, simple and text light.

2) You can now have a video cover photo at the top of your page.

3) Use apps such as Quik to group still photos together into a video with music and a text overlay.

Credit Debbie Assinder

Beating the Facebook Algorithm

1) The algorithm which determines what posts are shown to who and how often is influenced by 1000s of factors. These include who you are close to, your previous actions, location and how your friends are reacting to posts.

2) You are competing for attention so choose only your best content to post and the optimum time to post it.

3) If you post something at 9am and no one likes or comments on the post, Facebook may not show any more posts from you that day.

4) The more likes you get the more people Facebook will show the post to. If your post is a hit Facebook may show your next post to a bigger audience.

5) Shares are the most valuable reaction to a post as the viewer must be highly engaged to want to do this.

6) To get more comments ask questions at the end of your posts.

7) The optimum post length is around 250-300 characters and be sure to use a catchy opening line.

8) Facebook skewer the algorithm to promote new products. At the moment that would be live streaming.

Good examples of Facebook practice are:
1) Innocent Drinks for fun content.
2) Birmingham Hippodrome for promotional activity.
3) KLM for customer service.

Finally

A big thank you from all to Debbie for all the wonderful support she gives to local entrepreneurs.

Words by Paul Clarke

Tweet Pin It Now!

Heck Food Birmingham Food Exchange by Enterprise Nation

In October 2014 Heck Sausages had 9% of the premium sausage market. Within 2 years this would be up to 42%. With a no-nonsense approach to business, incredible experience and a determination to make up for a previous mistake of selling a precious family business that ended up being controlled by a large corporation low on morals and values, Andrew Keeble gave a turbo-charged performance at Enterprise Nation's Food Exchange last summer hosted by Debbie Assinder.

Now as Heck Food prepare to join Enterprise Nations Go Global Mission to Paris Andrew Keeble is a business man who mean’s business!

Full coverage of other brands at the Food Exchange here Food Exchange Summary

Credit: TwincafeTom Twitter

Below is Andrew’s Amazing Secrets to Success

1) Brand Development

“A brand has to have attitude and a voice.”

“Develop a brand with a clear goal in mind”.

“Who do you want to appeal to? You cannot be all things to all men”.

“Saying you are ‘niche’ doesn’t cut the mustard anymore and don’t be too niche as that’s a small market.”

"Decide if your brand is a lifestyle brand, regional, national, deli or food show specialist".

Heck’s market research showed that most sausage buyers were in the 45-70 years’ age group. The 18 to 45 age range was not engaged so they would need a new specific marketing campaign to target them. So, the brand was developed with this clear goal in mind. The Elmwood agency subsequently used consumer insights to design a campaign. They did not use focus groups as Andrew said “groups can be easily led by someone with a strong opinion”.

AIM: “To be mainstream enough and premium enough.”

Heck have a no compromise approach to quality. They don't cut corners and use fresh ingredients and do small-batch production to keep flavour quality high.

“We are a fun brand, we don’t take ourselves too seriously. Our attitude is ‘Be humble, we’re not worthy’ ”.

The youthful vibe of the brand is reflected in a workforce with 40% of employees under 26 and a fun, energetic working environment. To promote the brand, they go all over the country attending more than 500 events.


For example, to crack the Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland markets they sent two teams on a road trip around the counties giving out freebies, chatting and engaging with people. They got a proof of demand for the product in that area that they could then go into meetings with buyers to demonstrate Heck’s potential to make money.

“We don’t do a discount brand as dual-branding is very expensive.”

“The consumer is king and they want everything now.”

Andrew advised doing extensive market research using consumer insights and buying lots of data on customer trends such as Kantar Insights and Tesco Clubcard data from Dunnhumby. Tesco has around 13% of the market so the data is extremely useful and relevant. Andrew also recommended using Mintel reports.

2) Marketing

To drive the business forward Andrew spends 10% of Heck’s turnover on marketing both above and below the line. They do lots of PR and social media advertising. He warned that “price promotion will get you volume of sales but not loyalty. Customers will just switch brands depending on what’s on special offer that week i.e. Tropicana juice one week, Innocent the next”.

Of Heck’s 70 employees, 4 work full-time on social media. They prefer to post mostly on Facebook and Instagram as ‘Twitter is boring!”. The tone is not sales dominated “we are only £2:50 in Tesco this week!!”. They don’t talk too directly about the product or scream “look at me, look what I’m doing”.

“A complaining customer is your best friend.”

Why are they unhappy? Turn them into a brand advocate and give them their money back plus more.

"The best brands do evolve and change, unlike Kodak”.

Keep current, Andrew pointed out that the Amazon logo has changed 28 times since inception. Heck launched in 2013 and only 3 years later decided to do a brand refresh. People asked him why update when you’re doing well? Andrew’s answer was that the pace of change and future trends are so rapid that it’s worth spending £25k on a few tweaks.

3) Impressing Buyers

The sausage market in the UK is worth £840m which dwarves even the baked bean market at £600m. “We are swimming against the tide by growing sales in the premium category in a declining overall market”.

“Food is too cheap, so premiumising is a good thing.” Andrew did contrarily mention that shoppers can be promiscuous and that discount supermarkets had grown market share from 3% of the market to 11% in just three years. He wondered whether shoppers will get fed up of going from shop to shop just to save a few pennies.

With Richmond having a commanding 65% of the market he asked a key marketing question: “can we get their customers to spend just a few pennies more to trade up to us?”

You need to approach buyers ideally early in the year as after April you will struggle to get listed and you will have no chance at all after September as they will already be planning the next year.

Andrew advised that it’s important to understand that all buyers are under immense pressure from their bosses. They focus on sales; waste reduction and profit margin is key. They are super busy so aim to keep meetings to a brisk 20 minutes and make sure you know how the category is performing and how you can grow sales. Be chatty and remember personal details about them. Heck uses a small paper flip chart rather than PowerPoint for presentations. “Take notes on what they want the focus over the next year to be e.g. price. Confirm later that your understanding is correct”.

Download sales figures daily and provide retailers with suggestions weekly to improve selling.

“Always deliver your sales targets: hit your targets every quarter or you will your future meetings difficult. The better you perform, the more shelf space you will be given”.

“Retail changes so quickly, if you take a year out you can lose contacts quickly”.

To deliver the kind of profit margin buyers need, Heck works on a lean production model and make everything themselves including labels with direct labour accounting for less than 5% of costs.

Northern Echo

Andrew encouraged everyone to grow their list of suppliers and not be too dependent on one company. Tesco used to account for 80% of Heck’s business but now is down to 40%. Having said that you also don’t want to take on all of the big suppliers at once and they even turned down a huge order as they knew that they could not fulfil it.

4) Shelving: The Last 5 Yards

Getting listed is easy but standing out on the shelf is difficult. Sausages used to have ‘bodybag’ packaging so Heck went for an innovative and colourful cardboard packaging.

So although you’ve done all the hard work to get listed and stocked you must double check that your product made it on to the shelf and was displayed correctly. Use supermarket data to track stock replenishment and follow up in-store to check display values and correct price labelling etc.

5) Diversifying/Scaling Up

“Do you have a 2,3,4-year business plan? Set goals and work back from there.”

Heck’s marketing challenge is to move from being famous for sausage products and gaining a reputation for variety and vegetarian products. They began this by moving into chicken and healthy burger markets as Andrew bluntly put it “Quorn and Calder don’t deliver on taste or quality.”

Heck are opening a Heck World customer experience building in 2017 covering over 25,000 square feet housing a factory, picnic facilities and cookery school. They are also going to target the slimming community and health community as they are very vocal and their support can be a major boost.

In an interesting aside comment Andrew confidently predicted a £10 minimum wage in the UK by 2021.

Finally Naked Ambition

“Our turnover was £1m in the first year. Can we reach £80m by 2020?”

Words by Paul Clarke

Tweet Pin It Now!

This Mum Runs At Start Up 2017 Birmingham

Mel Bound's fab keynote speech at the end of Enterprise Nation's Start Up 2017 event in Birmingham was for many the highlight of a very exciting day.

Here's what you missed (you missed a lot!!)

The First Step

 A need!

A desire for some much needed headspace, exercise and me time led Mel to post on Facebook asking if any other busy mums felt the same and would anyone like to go for a run next Wednesday? 75 people showed up! Talk about discovering a need and a demand for something missing in these enthusiastic ladies lives.

Developing The Idea

  Mel quickly set up a This Mum Runs Facebook page and within days had hundreds of members. Most businesses can only dream of such momentum. Using an online coaching template for an 8 week beginners guide to running she quickly set up some structure and trained up additional TMR (This Mum Runs) running coaches.

Community Marketing

Important: Mel has done nearly all her marketing through Facebook and spent less than £2k on advertising. The caring and supportive attitudes of the TMR community are a big attraction and it is this inclusive attitude to welcome everyone that gives the concept mass appeal. There is no confidence-bashing focus on weight or competitiveness and a goal "to empower more mums around the world to be happier and healthier". 

Build a tribe as they say.

Checkout the inspiration category on TMR's website: Inspiration

Funding Your Business

Mel stated that she needed money to scale the business up from its current locations in Bristol and Bath. She turned to Crowdcube who have raised over £200m for over 400 businesses.

Before the campaign went live Mel and her team spent 3 months promoting the forthcoming fundraising round. This preparation was vital to gaining attention on launch and a prominent position on the homepage. Mel raised 50% of her target in 20 minutes and 100% in 10 days.

As you can see above she now has 300 investors who provided £100k in return for 14.68% of her business. Over half of the investors are TMR runners and 80% are female. Refreshing!

Finding Customers

Mel has proven a master at building TMR with an inspiring and supportive community spirit that generates phenomenal word of mouth and positive recommendations. There are now over 6,500 members. Through working with Facebook on the She Means Business campaign Mel had access to data confirming there has been more than 10,000 posts and 52,000 comments on the TMR page. Mel herself has made over 10,000 comments. Try and beat that for customer engagement!

 Building Income

TMR offers 90 free runs a month but generates most of its income from paid courses for beginners to seasoned pros. To supplement this Mel has also launched a cool range of clothing which is extremely popular with members proud to show they are very proud to be in TMR. Mel admitted that the first attempt at a clothes range was a bit rushed so they took more time and care second time around.

Mel's Top Tips!

Find someone who does know how to do the things that are not your strong point.

Mel has a super confident altar ego that she uses to appear more confident than she feels. Mel was so nervous when pitching at E Nation's Festival of Female Entrepreneurs that to hide that her legs were shaking she kept moving them from side to side.

Mel only spends one hour a day on emails and encourages people to only contact her if it's important.

Mel recently took herself away for a few days isolation to mentally detox and gain much needed headspace to think clearly what to do next with the business. Helping mothers such as Kelly Pike below, who needed a boost to her confidence is the why that drives every step forward TMR takes.

Mel Recommends!

To build your confidence Mel suggests watching this Ted Talk on body language by Amy Cuddy. It gets you to notice the effect your body language has on others and how they view you.

Fake It Until You Make It!

This book by School of Life gives a boost to your drive and risk-taking ambitions.

www.foyles.co.uk

Finally

 What a wonderful job Debbie Assinder did putting together this fantastic Start Up 2017 event for Enterprise Nation!

Tweet Pin It Now!