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The Shell LiveWIRE Smarter Future Programme Making a Difference

By Jessie Wilkens on June 30, 2015 in

lamp-432248_640If you are a struggling start-up, or you have an idea and would like to start a start-up, then listen up. Shell has launched the Shell LiveWIRE Smarter Future Programme with the goal of helping young, innovative entrepreneurs. You can apply with any invention and Shell will pay one of these lucky groups £5,000. A new winner is picked every month with a new win of £5,000.

Then, the 12 winners during the year will be considered for the annual £25,000 Shell LiveWIRE Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award.

The award is open to all entrepreneurs aged 16-30 that has “been trading for less than a year, or is looking to start trading in the next six months, and has an idea that addresses the UK’s future transport, energy, or natural resource challenges, or makes our urban environments cleaner and more sustainable places to work and live in.”

Learn more here and have the potential to transform your ideas into actions.

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F&C REIT Rebrands to BMO Real Estate Partners

By Jessie Wilkens on June 20, 2015 in
Leo Noe

Leo Noe

In a recent announcement, F&C REIT has said that it will rebrand to BMO Real Estate Partners next month. F&C REIT manages €6.9bn in assets. With the new rebranding, BMO Real Estate Partners will now encompass F&C REIT’s current real estate fund management services and offices in the UK, Germany, France and Ireland.

F&C REIT recently recruited Ian Kelley as fund director for Europe and head of France. Leo Noe, the executive chairman at BMO Real Estate Partners shared this about the upcoming plans:

“Our new name marks an exciting time for the business, with greater scope for developing and distributing our capabilities across BMO’s North American and global teams, whilst maintaining our real estate boutique qualities.”

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Fourex Kiosks Coming to London

By Jessie Wilkens on June 7, 2015 in

You may soon notice a new machine around the London tube stations and the Westfield shopping centres. It’s a Fourex kiosk that will accept your unsorted coins and notes in and out of circulation from over 150 currencies…and convert their value into pounds, euros or US dollars. Invented by entrepreneurs Jeff Paterson and Oviver Du Toit, the device won’t charge fees or commission. Certainly, the rate that customers receive on some of the currencies will be low, but it will be better than keeping those old coins in the drawer.
All of the exchange rates will be clearly displayed on the screen at the kiosk and customers can use the exchange rate calculator on the main screen to see exactly how much they will get back for their money.

The company has secured a contract with Transport for London and Westfied so that the machines will sit in these two locations. They have garnered support through the crowdfunding website CrowdCube to the tune of £670,000 in less than two weeks.

The co-founder of Fourex, Jeff Paterson, said “We have been completely humbled by the interest, excitement and investment we have received so far for Fourex, not only from multi-million pound companies such as TFL and Westfield, but from the 436 people from every corner of the globe who invested through CrowdCube.”

Those who use the machines can also donate part or all of their exchange to six charities. These include UNICEF, The Railway Children, The Guide Dogs for the Blind Association, The London Transport Museum, EllenorLions Hospice and the UK Stroke Association.

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Kirsty’s Making Its Name in the UK

By Jessie Wilkens on May 25, 2015 in

If you haven’t heard of Kirsty’s, you probably will soon. Kirsty Henshaw was a single mom from Preston, Lanchashire, who launched her brand of healthy ready meals in 2012.

Worth £4 million today, Kirsty’s is the UK’s fastest-growing branded ready meal business. But beyond the success of the business is the surprise that Kirsty was able to make a go of it. She left school at 15 and has been raising her son, Jacob, all on her own.

She was inspired to start her business as a result of Jacob’s food allergies. As she recalled,

“It all started when he was nine months old,’ recalls Kirsty. ‘I had been eating a peanut butter sandwich and, when I cuddled him a few minutes later, Jacob came out in a rash. The doctor confirmed that he was allergic to nuts. Tests showed that he cannot tolerate dairy, either. I was desperate to find healthy things that he could enjoy eating, so I started experimenting.”

She started out by making home-made ice cream. The neighbors were soon asking for some and she started to make it commercially. Her parents owned a health food store which helped her with the business sense and the ingredients.

Appearing on BBC’s Dragons’ Den in July 2010, Kirsty was able to walk away with an investment of £65,000 in Kirsty’s for a 30 per cent stake of her business. She was actually the youngest person to ever get backing on the show. With this support, she started to sell her ice cream in supermarkets, and expanded into read meals for adults in 2012

As Kirsty said,

“There was a real gap in the market for people like me who want to eat healthy ready meals. After a lot of experimenting I came up with a range of seven chilled dishes, including Chicken Tikka Masala, Cottage Pie and Lasagne. Each meal is gluten and dairy-free and is under 400 calories. We do not take anything out; we just put the right ingredients in.”

Sales have grown 75 per cent in the past 12 months.

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A Brilliant Business Model

By Jessie Wilkens on May 7, 2015 in

dress-294514_640

Ladies, if you have not yet heard about Gwynnie Bee, you’ll definitely want to know about it. This is a truly brilliant business model and it would be interesting to see if such a model exists in the UK (or if it’s a business idea for someone to develop).

Gwynnie Bee wants women to have wonderful wardrobes without paying astronomical prices. How do they achieve this? They are a clothing rental subscription service that caters to larger women. You look through their collection and decide what you want to order. You can enjoy unlimited free shipping and exchanges for a flat monthly fee. You add clothes to your closet, select a plan and bring home clothes. You can return whatever you want to return and then get more clothes. And, if you fall in love with some of the clothing, you can select to buy it at a reduced price.

Learn more about Gwynnie Bee and see if it just might be a business model for your next venture.

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Where are Brits Moving Away To and Why?

By Jessie Wilkens on April 14, 2015 in

As many as 13 of every 200 people who are from England have left for other shores. However, emigration levels have decreased. In 2006, 203,000 Britons moved abroad, while last year only 137,000 did so. What are the top destinations that they are flocking to according to the study by Lloyd Bank?

Australia is still the most popular spot, drawing in 207,000 Britons in the last five years. Three times as many Britons emigrate to Australia as do to the second most popular stop – the USA. Spain has taken a bit of a back seat at number three. Between 2009 and 2014, only 52,000 Britons have moved to Spain.

The most popular destinations for Britons from 2009 to 2014 was as such:

Australia    207,000
USA    72,000
Spain    52,000
France    51,000
New Zealand    43,000
Canada    36,000
Germany    36,000
United Arab Emirates    35,000
Republic of Ireland    15,000
Switzerland    13,000

How long to expats plan to stay abroad? This depended, according to the study, on their location. Half of those who moved to Australia said that they planned to stay for more than five years, while 70-75% of those who moved to France and Spain planned to stay at least that long.

As Richard Musty, International Private Bank Director at Lloyds Bank, said:
“Our research shows that British citizens who emigrated from the UK since 2009 have mainly done so to work. In recent years we have seen a steady stream of people moving overseas looking for employment – with many going with a job offer in place.”

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Drastic Rise in Online Buying in the UK

By Jessie Wilkens on March 25, 2015 in

According to Barclaycard, online spending is up by a quarter in just four years and more than 20% of all spending is likely to be done online this year. Their data shows that 22% of all card spending last year was done online and the rate is only growing.

Last year in the UK, online spending on clothing rose by 41% for men and 32% for women. Restaurants shot up by 47% mostly for takeaway food. Chris Wood, the managing director at Barclaycard said, “Takeaway restaurants are thriving thanks to consumers who are hungry for home delivery with the convenience of ordering online. Although these orders account for a small portion of total restaurant spending, we’ve seen phenomenal growth from nimble businesses that make the process easier than ever before.”

Peter Backman of the food analysts Horizon said, “The figures reflect both the overall growth in the home delivery market, as people are increasingly choosing to order in rather than buy food to cook from their local supermarket. There is also the fact that where previously people might have phoned up their local takeaway and paid in cash, nowadays people are far more likely to either order direct online or go via one of the delivery sites. Friends eating at home together can order their own food and pay for their own meals rather than having to decide what to have together, so one can eat Thai while the other has a pizza.”

The beginning of 2015 also saw a sharp rise in online spending at tourist attractions and amusement parks. People are much more comfortable booking and buying tickets online and more people have smartphones and tablets.

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Find Out Who One First Place in the Small Shops Competition

By Jessie Wilkens on March 2, 2015 in ,

 

If you’re looking for the place that was just crowned as the best small shop in England – then you’ll need to go to Hunters of Helmsley. Owned and run by husband-wife team Chris and Christine Garnett since 2008, they beat out close to 300 applicants from across the country.

The judges in The Independent Retailers Confederation Best Small Shops Competition 2015 voted for the market town deli due to its commitment to using local produce and supporting the British business supply network.

As Christine said, “We both come from Yorkshire farming families, and we are passionate about how and where food is produced. Every year we spend days scouring food fairs and events searching for the best new products available. We also stock artisan products from around the world.”

The Garnetts explain that at least 70% of their products are sourced from within Yorkshire. Christine said, ”There is a tremendous local business group which has really come together during the past three years. You can really see there is now a big difference between us and some other towns.

In around 2012 I could see the recession starting to hit in Helmsley and I knew certain businesses were struggling. We were actually doing alright, but if you start to get empty shops in the High Street it doesn’t become as attractive for visitors, and although the community is very supportive of our shops we do need visitors, too.

‘I discussed it initially with our next door neighbours – the shop beside us – and we decided to get our heads together and see if we could form some sort of support group – because there’s strength in numbers. Slowly but surely the business group formed and now there’s a group of 50 that all support one another to promote the town and put on events for visitors.”

Each store was rated in three areas: innovation, community engagement and entrepreneurial activity. The judges game high rewards to a few other business including NISA Local, Toddington, Bedfordshire, a convenience store, and The Main Street Trading Company, St Boswells, Roxburghshire, a bookshop and deli.

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How Does Your Salary Compare to Others in the UK?

By Jessie Wilkens on February 10, 2015 in

The 2014 ONS annual salaries survey is worth a look. The overall average wage for 21,563,000 people was £27,271. The closest people to this pay grade are sheet metal workers.

There are different ways to interpret the data, but it’s helpful to look at the list and to see where you fall alongside your peers.

See the entire chart and make the comparisons. The table here includes job titles and the corresponding mean average annual salary for that job.

Here is a glimpse at the top 10. See the entire chart and take a look.

1 Brokers £133,677 n/a 16,000
2 Chief executives and senior officials £107,703 -8.4% 69,000
3 Aircraft pilots and flight engineers £90,146 12.5% 8,000
4 Marketing and sales directors £82,962 -2.4% 126,000
5 Information technology and telecommunications directors £80,215 23.7% 23,000
6 Financial institution managers and directors £78,782 7.2% 83,000
7 Advertising and public relations directors £77,619 23.8% 7,000
8 Financial managers and directors £76,320 -0.9% 238,000
9 Air traffic controllers £75,416 9.3% n/a
10 Legal professionals £73,425 -1.2% 34,000
11 Medical practitioners £69,463 -1.7% 171,000
12 Actuaries, economists and statisticians £61,749 0.2% 16,000
13 Senior police officers £58,533 -0.4% 12,000
14 Human resource managers and directors £56,315 4.3% 89,000
15 Research and development managers £52,882 6.7% 39,000
16 Purchasing managers and directors £52,683 1.2% 45,000
17 Sales accounts and business development managers £51,576 7.2% 392,000
18 Physical scientists £50,763 -6% n/a
19 Production managers and directors in manufacturing £49,690 -3.5% 416,000
20 Senior professionals of educational establishments £49,679 0.6% 89,000
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Flying Out Today? Will You Get There on Time?

By Jessie Wilkens on January 11, 2015 in

planeIf air travel makes you crazy and you want to streamline the experience as much as possible, you’ll want to check out this list. The report, published by OAG which is an aviation data service that provides flight schedules around the world, named 20 airlines on the list of most punctual.

Only two British airlines made the cut including EasyJet and Monarch. For the US carriers, only Hawaiian Airways and Alaska Airways made it in. The majority of the airlines, 12, were European.

Ironically, the top spot was snagged by little –known airBaltic, followed by Hawaiian Airlines and Austrian Airlines.

To get their list, OAG analyzed 200 operators around the world in terms of available seat miles in 2014 in airlines that operated more than 30,000 scheduled flights last year.

The full list, as presented by OAG was:

  1. airBaltic – 94.9% OTP in 2014
  2. Hawaiian Airlines – 92.3% OTP in 2014
  3. Austrian Airlines – 90% OTP in 2014
  4. Iberia – 89.7% OTP in 2014
  5. Norwegian Air Shuttle – 89.7% OTP in 2014
  6. KLM – 89.4% OTP in 2014
  7. Saudi Arabian Airlines – 89.4% OTP in 2014
  8. SAS – 89.1% OTP in 2014
  9. Japan Airlines – 88.8% OTP in 2014
  10. Thai AirAsia – 88.7% OTP in 2014
  11. Finnair – 88.6% OTP in 2014
  12. Alaska Airlines – 88.5% OTP in 2014
  13. Air New Zealand – 88.3% OTP in 2014
  14. easyJet – 87.7% OTP in 2014
  15. All Nippon Airways – 87.3% OTP in 2014
  16. Air Europa – 87.1% OTP in 2014
  17. Lufthansa – 87.1% OTP in 2014
  18. Monarch Airlines – 86.9% OTP in 2014
  19. Aegean Airlines – 86.5% OTP in 2014
  20. Air Berlin – 86.4% OTP in 2014
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