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.