the small business academy
Helping small and start-up businessesOur Founder Nikki started her business at
the age of 23, in her final year of university. She hit upon an unmet demand for
clothing and lingerie to fit bigger busted girls. She had no prior textile or
business experience, but knew there was a market for the product. With almost no
cash, she set out to launch her start-up business but hit multiple challenges
along the way – not understanding how to promote her business online, how to
generate sales, run online ads or manage her own SEO, and no budget to pay
someone for help, she had no choice but to figure it out through a matrix of
failed experiments, free online information and training workshops where they
were affordable (and not many were!) Eventually, one sale became two, and two
became ten, and within a couple of years the business took off – by 2010 Nikki
had been awarded the Natwest Everywoman Artemis Business Award and in 2011
appeared on Dragons Den, securing private investment of £250,000 after the show
had aired. This enabled her to scale her brand, re-shore production to the UK
and eventually culminated in running a factory in Preston with over a dozen
machinists, and supplying her brand to the high street. But her frustration
remained around the lack of practical help and support for startup business
owners. Training courses seldom left her with any usable information to
implement – they would talk about the benefits of Facebook marketing, or SEO, or
Social Media but never gave enough information to actually go and do it
yourself.
