Small is Beautiful

To tie in with Small Business Saturday which takes place on 6th Dec we look at 4 reasons for us to be proud of running a small business.

We also suggest that these advantages of small business can be taken and tailored to own marketing material adding incentive to our community to bring their custom our way.

1. A Personal Relationship

- Small business owners are able to have personal relationships with their customers. The trust and knowledge built up through personal relationships allows for a better service, more tailored and to the customer's needs.

In the background the relationship with employees and suppliers is likely to be stronger and in turn this often leads to better service to customers.

In short a small business can operate at the level of mutual understanding between individuals rather than policy leading to greater flexibility and better timing of service.

2. Innovation

- Small business tends to be the vison of one person. This tends to solutions, products, ways of doing business that cannot be found elsewhere.

Furthermore the business owners intimate knowledge of their market leads to solutions tailored to the particular environment that they find themselves in.

A great example is the way that local cafes increasingly cater for buggies and children knowing that we are in an area with its own baby boom occuring.

3. Efficiency

- Small business does not have huge resources and therefore there is little unnecessary expenditure. In many cases owners have much more modest expectations of return than larger businesses and this leads a much more efficient model of business.

4. Contribution to our community and society

- Imagining our neighbourhoods without small business invokes a fairly bleak picture.

Small businesses can also be proud of their contribition to the wealth of the nation. Almost two thirds of business in the UK is small. Nearly 90% have less than 6 employees. They are also an important source of employment accounting for 32% of private sector employment.

Recent research shows that between 1998 and 2010 small business accounted for around two thirds of new jobs created.

Small business is also not known for its elaborate tax avoidance schemes and recent measures like the Fair Tax Mark will help to recognise this contribution to pulling the UK out of its budget deficit.