Rob Law is the founder of ‘Trunki’ the world’s first hand luggage approved kid’s suitcase with wheels. He was rejected by the TV show Dragons’ Den but then went on to sell more than 250,000 ‘Trunki’s’ in 30 countries, through over 300 retailers including John Lewis. Rob is supporting World Trade Week UK.
Rob says:
I’ve seen for myself the benefits of thinking globally when it comes to launching your own business. There really is a world of opportunity for budding entrepreneurs – you just have to be positive and wholly committed to your ideas and vision. Going international with your product can be daunting, particularly in the current economic climate, but the potential returns are huge.
In fact, trading internationally has made Trunki stronger and better equipped to ride out the recession, as our diverse income stream means we are protected from the changes in individual foreign money markets.
This week is the first ever World Trade Week UK, launched by the government to promote free and open trade between countries. As creator of the Trunki brand, I’m very keen to offer my support to initiatives such as this and Global Entrepreneurship Week.
Sharing business skills and knowledge across the world doesn’t just benefit individual businesses like ours, it is absolutely crucial for the wider global economy and will be key in steering us out of the current economic crisis.
To find out more about World Trade Week, visit the website.
1) The Referral Economists: commercially-minded folk who have emerged from the social networking boom. 2) The Slash Slash Careerist: the product of the MySpace School of business who see themselves as brands and their customers as fans. 3) The Collaborateer: walks the fine line between information and piracy where everything is negotiable.
And 4) The Transpreneur: an elite new breed of super-global entrepreneur with connections and workspaces all over the world, are set to dominate the British business environment.
We are glad to feature Rajeeb Dey, founder of enternships.com, as a guest blogger at Make Your Mark today:
“The story is a familiar one…on the one hand, large corporates are scaling back recruitment drives leaving graduates and university students with few ‘traditional’ routes to find experience. On the other, start-ups and small/medium businesses (SMEs) need highly skilled, motivated and creative people to roll their sleeves up and get involved in working with them in growing their businesses. These small firms struggle to find efficient ways to reach out to these candidates as they do not have the time or budgets to go out on campuses to do the traditional ‘milkround’.
Last time I described how motivation plays a huge part in the process of success. Without a high level of motivation to do anything in life you will not achieve the end result you are looking for.
This time, we move onto another component of success, which is Clear Aims.
Component Number 2 – CLEAR AIMS
People who are successful are very good at defining exactly what it is they want. Many people I come cross have very loose ideas about what exactly it is they are aiming for. As a result they drift about with a broad idea of where they are going but with little direction or conviction mainly because they do not know what the end result is or what it looks like.
Hi all, my name is Phil Crowshaw and I am one of those weird folk, people call an Entrepreneur. I run a business called Experts Business Solutions (www.expertsbusinesssolutions.com) but I am probably best known as the founder of online business TV web site www.expertsonline.tv , which I started in 2004.
All sorts of stuff runs through your mind when writing a blog. What style should I write it in? How controversial should I be? How real should I be? Who will be reading it? (if anybody). What will people be interested in?…the list goes on. I soon realised that you can analyse it to death so I will write what pops into my head based on my insights and experience in business and let you decide if it’s any good…or not.
The winners of the 2009 Make Your Mark Enterprising Young Brits Awards were announced today (Tuesday 24 March 2009) at a very swanky ceremony at the Institute of Directors (IoD), London.
They were each presented with a trophy and £1,000 prize money by Chancellor Alistair Darling, who made time to chat to finalists and hear their positive stories.
A report on the World Entrepreneur Society’s 2009 Summit, from Make Your Mark Ambassador Vernon Kerswell.
I had the privilege to attend this event as a Make your Mark Ambassador. Dedicated to entrepreneurs, it was organised by the World Entrepreneur Society, held at the prestigious Goodenough College, London. The theme… “What keeps you awake at night?”
This event, now in its second year, was organised to bring together great minds to share, learn and celebrate enterprise. It was largely attended by entrepreneurs who had made it in their business. Executives rolling up for a prompt 9am start armed with their Blackberries and iPhones in hand, twittering as they went. It was also well attended by the entrepreneurs of tomorrow, some of whom had fledgling businesses and others who had just begun their journey. With a ticket price of £120 (£55 for students) it made this event even more exclusive, and for those just starting out, even in a recession, it was a good investment for those wanting to meet like minded people.
You know what we need more of? Great people doing great things.
People growing a global economy through knowledge sharing, fair trade initiatives and investment in community enterprises abroad.
People boosting our own economy through innovation and smart use of technology, creating local jobs, solving everyday problems and growing their business at an exponential rate.
Social entrepreneurs helping us to care for an improve our environment, and giving communities new opportunities whether they’re on farms or in film studios.
Inspiring young people using their passion for music, cinema and technology to make an impact no matter their age.
The winners of the Global Entrepreneurship Week competition, Unleash It, went along to their prize pow-wow with Raj Anand and the social networking geniuses at Kwiqq this week. The ACS (African Caribbean Society) sat down for a one on one with the team and they grabbed the guys to share their thoughts. Take a look…
It’s been in the news recently that Cadbury’s is going fair trade. So what does this mean for the business - does switching to fair trade (for Dairy Milk bars and its hot drinks range) make it a social enterprise?
Doing a bit of research, I learned that the fair trade initiative means Cadbury will now pay a guaranteed minimum price for Ghanaian cocoa, even if the open market price falls below it. Social enterprise is different, as companies like Divine show. Through Divine’s social enterprise model, farmers also share in the profits and are involved in decision making as well as being guaranteed a minimum price.
It’s 9:30 in the morning in Kansas city and I am sitting between Virginia from Argentina and Jolia from Singapore. This is the Global Entrepreneurship Congress, generously hosted by our Global Entrepreneurship Week co-founders, The Kauffman Foundation.
Hosts of last November’s Global Entrepreneurship Week joined together from far and further away, battling the elements to make it to this truly global gathering. The storms have followed us from Chicago to Kansas City but the wind and the rain have been no match for the thunder and lightening unleashed by the 60 nations united in this room - 25,000 events and over 3 million participants during one Week - a stunning achievement by any standard, but when it comes to inspiration (for me)- it’s all in the detail.
Have you thought of being your own boss, of being an entrepreneur? Maybe you are an entrepreneur. Can you explain it in a video?
The European Commission is looking for videos that explore one of the following subjects: “The entrepreneurial spirit”, “Innovative Entrepreneurship”, “Responsible Entrepreneurship”
For the best video in each of the three categories the European Commission will award a prize of € 3,000, the second best video will be awarded € 2,000, the third best € 1,000.
The producers of the best videos will be invited to the opening event of the European week for small and medium sized enterprises on 6 May 2009 in Brussels, Belgium. Enter here.
Our US founder buddies of Global Entrepreneurship Week, the Kauffman Foundation, have published their annual Thoughtbook. It’s sort of like an annual report… if annual reports were thought-provoking, profound, engaging and creative collections of essays, with contributions from Nobel Prize laureates and jam makers extraordinaire.
If you’re interested in learning vs education, the evolution of capitalism, visionary science and big entrepreneurial ideas, not to mention jam, you’ll find loads of stuff that’s worth a read. The Thoughtbook takes a broad definition of enterprise as innovation, action and passion. There’s a line I really like in Gordon Brown’s essay on Building Enterprise Cultures Worldwide. The PM quotes John Stuart Mill’s definition of enterprise as “the desire to keep moving… to be trying and accomplishing new things for our own benefit or that of others.”
Don’t take my word for it (hey I work here) but check out a lovely blog from one of our ambassadors Raj Anand which includes this rather cool pic…
Chocs away
Raj is a fine example of one of our brilliant ambassadors - he spreads the good word about enterprise on social media in particular, he ran a competition in Global Entrepreneurship Week and is supporting Make Your Mark with a Tenner. An all round good egg!
A new research report from our friends in the US, the Kaufmann Foundation, suggests that men-owned business are more successful that women-owned businesses. After two years surveying 5000 businesses they found that women-owned businesses had lower survival rates, lower size, growth, earnings and profits. They suggest a few reasons why this might be the case;
- Access to credit (62% of women-owned businesses started with less than $25k, compared with 55% of men-owned; a higher percentage of women have low credit scores)
- Lifestyle businesses (women may be starting businesses as a lifestyle choice)
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