On the 28th April, we held our first Business Briefing Event at the Woodlands Hotel in Spalding.

The day was broken down into several parts:

• Introduction to the Robust Futures Project- Paul Parkinson, Project Leader
• Economic overview of Lincolnshire- Liz Price, Research Fellow, Lincoln Uni
• Economic Overview of South Holland, Bruce Wakeling, Economic Development Manager for SHDC.
• Introduction and signup information for the Business Inspiration Development Programme.
• Guest speakers – John Hope from Premier Composites and Andy Harsley, Inventor of ‘rapstrap’, as seen on Dragons Den.
• Interactive Business Workshop.

The aim of the day was to make it informative, worthwile and productive for the businesses that attended, and the feedback recieved confirmed that our objective had definitely been met to great success.

On the day we had 20 businesses attend, 12 of which signed up for the first round of our Business Inspiration Programme which kicks off at the end of this month.

Our next event takes place in Grantham on the 25th of May at the Belton Woods Hotel.

If you are interested in attending, or want more information about the project then please contact Paul Parkinson on: pparkinson@lincoln.ac.uk

Robust Futures Team Update.

Since our last post, alot has happened and the project has moved on quite considerably – ironically not leaving us time to post updates on here!

We have signed up 12 businesses to the first round of the Business Inspiration Programme, held a sucessful event in Spalding with 20 businesses in attendance and are well underway with our next event that is taking place in Grantham at the end of this month.

Phew!

Today we met with Lesley Berrington of Hattie and Friends.

Hattie and Friends is a range of books, jigsaws, posters and other learning equipment that features children with disabilities. The aim of them is  to promote a positive image of disability for young children providing a new range of inclusive resources for pre-school children.

Lesley is clearly very excited by the range that she has produced, and with good reason – unbelievably she is one of a very small number of companies out there who produce books that feature children with disabilities, even though inclusion is such a key issue in todays education environments.

Not only does Hattie and Friends cover an important topic, the books are actually very engaging for pre-school children as well.

The illustrations are bright and colourful, and the characters have a charm that is often missing in many modern children’s books.

Lesley has done very well with her range so far, securing some lucrative contracts with third party distributors and building her online presence.

However, where she felt the project could really help her, was by firstly giving her access to University contacts and resources in key areas, and secondly by booking onto the Business Inspiratons course as well, she feels this will give her the ability to tackle all areas of creating a ongoing business strategy.

For more information on Hattie and Friends, please click here.

Lucille Sheppard, MD of Hand in Hand Ltd, has signed up to the programme.

Lucille runs a technical and food services training company that specialises in training courses for the Food industry.  One thing that was evident from meeting Lucille was her passion for what she does, and the high standards that she applies to every training course that she designs and delivers.

She describes Hand in Hand Ltd as:

“My company has two arms,  I also offer Technical & Quality Management Systems Installation and Support to small companies who need the general technical food safety systems support to cover the requirements of the British Retail Consortium  (BRC) whilst they grow. The installation of the BRC into the smaller company can open many doors to expand thier customer base and grow thier business.  I can be hired one or more days a week to advise and help them progress the very import Food Safety and Quality Management Systems, with staff being trained whilst the system is being installed.   Also for the larger company I can be that extra pair of hands during any busy periods.”

 She has high levels of integrity when it comes to her business, and it is clear that she always delivers above and beyond what her customers expect, the testamonials on her website showing the many satisfied customers she has dealt with.

Lucille had reached a bit of a crossroads when we met her, she has a fantastic product, satisfied existing customers, but no clear route to get her product to new customers. She signed up for our project, because she felt that the expert advice she would receive would better equip her to market her product successfully.

She has already starting working on the beginnings of a new marketing plan, and with some guidance from the project team, has set up a meeting with a major supermarket chain to discuss her training, and is in talks with several others as well.

For more information about the training courses that Hand in Hand offer, please click here.

We have recently recieved our evaluation report of the Launch Event back from the Chamber of Commerce, and were pleased to see that of all the people who filled in the evaluation form, 97.8% were satisfied or very satisfied with the event.

As always there is always room for improvement, and we have taken all the feedback comments that accompanied it very seriously, so that we can hopefully achieve a 100% result with our next events county wide!

For more information about the next event in your area, please contact Paul Parkinson, Project Leader on: pparkinson@lincoln.ac.uk

Very busy week so slight delay in writing this post. Last week we held a very successful meeting with Paul Goldacre and Cherrie Rollerson of PM Engineering.

When we met Paul and Cherrie it was evident that these were two individuals who were clearly very passionate about their company and their products, which was great to see!

Paul as MD has been grafting away since 1995, which has taken the company leaps and bounds to where it is today. In a nutshell, PM Engineering are a steel fabrication company, specialising in stainless steel, aluminium and cast welding, with a range of very innovative products. They have recently won some very exciting contracts and have been nominated for an industry award.

Paul and Cherrie have signed up for our first Business Briefing as well as the ‘Business Inspiration’ programme, as they felt that the level of free guidance and expertise on offer would help catapult their business to the next level. 

Both myself and Paul left the meeting very excited about the potential of the partnership between both organisations.

I have included below pictures of a couple of PM Engineering’s products, as well as my personal favourite, the ‘Bull Roast’ which is a personal project of Paul’s- a bespoke Hog Roast, which has been fabricated in the shape of a bull!!

If you would like more information about any of PM Engineering’s products, then thier website can be found here.

This is the video that Andrew at Brightspark Studios created for us to kick off our Launch event. It is a 2 minute video, which we feel really encapsulates our great county, both in its beauty and also its diversity.