Advice and Ideas for UK Small Businesses and SMEs
To help showcase the next generation of local businesses, the competition will give lucky UK small business owners the chance to win pop-up space in one of the most popular shopping centres in the UK during the bustling festive period.
Could you be one of the winners?
Winners will get high-profile awareness via the footfall through the St James Quarter during the festive period, plus you’ll secure impressive press coverage.
Invite investors, peers or prospects to showcase your business. The shop also has an events space where we’ll run events during the pop-up.
A unique opportunity to sell or demo your product or service to potential customers at scale and garner invaluable face-to-face feedback from consumers.
Get a pipeline of high-intent leads for your business that you can follow up with beyond the shop.
(Interview with each winner)
Including email newsletters and social media posts
Founder and director of Cake or Death
Katie Cross had a career in fundraising and development for a range of charities before quitting in January 2019 to pursue her dream of being a business owner. Cake or Death started as a wholesale vegan cake company in early 2019. After the incredible response to Cake or Death’s brownies at a vegan market in London, Katie focused her energy on the secret recipe and developed several new flavours. Once the pandemic hit, Katie pivoted the business from wholesale to Cake or Death’s ingenious consumer letterbox brownie boxes. The bakery moved from East London to Exeter in Summer 2021 where it now houses a shop front and continues to send bakes across the country.
MD of LoveReading
Deborah is the managing director of LoveReading and LoveReading4Kids and she has been steering the ship since 2018. Her involvement in the LoveReading portfolio brings together her media background, passion for books, her love of literacy, marketing knowledge and her commercial acumen and has led the LoveReading brand into a new world, filled with brilliantly bookish content and the launch of an online bookstore with social purpose. LoveReading was one of the winners of the Sage x Smallbusiness.co.uk inaugual competition in June which enabled them to have their very first physical presence as a bookstore.
Global VP of integrated campaigns for Sage
Olly joined Sage in January 2022 as the global VP of integrated campaigns. He’s responsible for driving the strategy and creative for all our campaigns globally, with the ambition to make Sage an iconic brand in its category. Olly has a wealth of experience in marketing and advertising, creating transformation and award-winning campaigns for some of the world’s biggest brands, working with companies such as Unilever, ABInBev and Mars.
Vice president of UKI performance marketing for Sage
Kirsty Waller is vice president of UKI performance marketing for Sage. She is responsible for gaining insight and understanding of the ever-changing business environment for SMBs and supporting over 1m UK customers to scale and grow their businesses. Kirsty’s professional experience covers brand strategy, digital transformation, customer acquisition, customer success and loyalty, and building thought leadership in the technology space. Throughout her career she has had a focus on building high performance teams and is passionate about providing the right environment for people to thrive, take calculated risks and be the best they can be.
Entries close at midnight on 15th October 2023
The winning businesses will take over the space from Tuesday 28th November– Saturday 2nd December (with the shop open for trading Wednesday-Saturday). The competition is open to all UK businesses who have been trading for less than five years (up to and including 28th November 2023) and is completely free to enter.
The winners will be announced on Monday 23rd October.