A SMALL Scottish company with ambitions to be the "Starbucks of business networking" has launched its first UK franchise in Fife.
Katrina Wilkinson and business partner Wendy Sneddon plan to boost business support among Fife's 6,000 small firms with the launch of Business9am.
"It is about giving people in Fife the opportunity to do business with each other," said Sneddon.
The annual membership fee will involve regular informal events in St Andrews, Dunfermline, Glenrothes and Kirkcaldy, while members will also be able to join other Business9 events in Glasgow and Edinburgh.
Amanda Boyle, the chief executive of Business9am, relaunched the networking group after taking over from founder Tricia Fox at the beginning of last year. Boyle, who formerly headed Caledonia Contracts and previously chaired Scottish Enterprise Tayside, changed the focus of the networking group and renamed it. Where previously the network, called Bacon & Eggs Entrepreneurs, targeted start-ups and owner managers, membership criteria has been widened to include business managers. "It didn't take an economist to work out why that market had very little commercial potential," said Boyle.
The new group will focus on recruiting Fife-based businesses into the wider Business9am network. "There's an awful lot of business that goes on in Fife that even people in Fife aren't aware of," said Boyle.
"When I was at Caledonian Contracts, one of our biggest competitors were based in Fife. But there are a lot of businesses in Fife that can't afford to have an interest in just doing business there and we want to tap into that."
Boyle admits the roll-out of the new format is slower than she would have liked, although the network now runs groups in Newcastle and Liverpool in addition to Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee, Stirling and Perth.
Boyle plans to launch another chapter in Edinburgh as well as one targeting local businesses in Aberdeen. She aims to roll out more Business-9am units on a franchise model in areas with a minimum density of 3,000 local businesses.
Sneddon and Wilkinson both previously worked for Dunfermline-based emergency veterinary service Vets Now for five years and decided they wanted to branch out on their own. Wilkinson has an MBA while Sneddon is completing a Masters of Entrepreneurship at Strathclyde University.
"We joined Business9am after we read about it," said Sneddon. "We had been thinking of setting up a network or some way of getting businesses together to share issues. We went along to Business9am and thought this is just what we would have envisaged doing ourselves."
Business9am offers an alternative to other business networking events in Fife, such as those run by Fife Chamber and chapters of Business Network International, which espouse a more formal programme of introductions.
"As marketing budgets are shrinking, this offers such a cost-effective way of being able to market your business across the UK," said Sneddon. "The feedback we have been getting has been great. The members appreciate the gentle introductions to people."
The full article contains 500 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
