Business Development
BRIGHTON ROCKS FOR SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS But only if you know how to take advantage of it, says EMC Management Consultants’ business development consultant, Chris White.
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righton is a city of epithets. There’s bohemian Brighton, gay Brighton, touristy Brighton, high-tech Brighton. But what of business Brighton? Is so-called ‘Silicon Beach’ a shiny commercial, high-tech gem of the South coast, or is Brighton merely the seat of significant retired – and tired! – wealth? Last year I did some work to analyse the true nature of the business demographics of Brighton and its environs, and it led to some interesting findings. With 94% of operations in the city being parentless, Brighton is certainly a bastion of the independents. This puts it 7% above the national average and is in marked contrast to, say, Crawley which has 10% fewer independents than Brighton. Confirming Brighton’s reputation as a creative hot-house, a 2015 Centre for Cities survey stated: “Brighton has the highest proportion of SMEs [in the UK] in the creative
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industries relative to the size of the city’s total SME base, with one in eight SMEs operating in the sector.”
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There are some lucrative markets in Brighton, but they require cunning business development and marketing strategies
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The ‘Silicon Beach’ label certainly seems to be justified as almost a quarter of all these businesses are in the high-tech sector. This is an enormous proportion - six times the national average! Many of these make up the high
share – 14% compared to 9% nationally – of ‘fast growth’ companies in the city. More than 8.5 million tourists, who plough around £800m annually into the local economy, support a huge swathe of hotel and leisure businesses. Thousands of independent shops, retailers and B&Bs make up a very big proportion of the smaller business community. Also really notable is the size of these small businesses. Brighton businesses, on the whole, are very small. It’s estimated that 85% of them are ‘micro’ businesses – that is to say they have nine or fewer employees. Of course, when you look across the demographic of any significant city, there will always be a raft of smaller businesses, but it’s particularly true of Brighton – by some margin. 75% of Brighton businesses have a turnover below £1m – that’s 15% points above the national average.