KC Building Services (Midlands) Ltd is a family run building contracting business incorporated in 2003. Kier personally has 27 years’ experience in the industry.
In recent years, the business has expanded into a full service building contractor and has undertaken more commercial work. Kier approached the D2N2 Growth Hub for advice and support in achieving his growth ambitions.
The Food Safety Team at Chesterfield Borough Council wanted to reward businesses and help promote them through social media; encourage food handlers to wear protective clothing and to promote the Food Hygiene Rating scheme. They decided to offer branded aprons and hats to small independent businesses that had made significant effort and improved their food hygiene rating score and approached the businesses soon after their inspection and offered them the opportunity to participate.
Established in 1990, following significant industry experience, Richard Reith's financial services business is based at Dunston Innovation Centre, Chesterfield. As the sector has changed over the years, Richard has developed significant business to business opportunities and now services individual needs where there is the most to gain from careful investment, retirement and life insurance planning.
Examination of the customer service model in conjunction with the Growth Hub Advisor enabled the business to fine tune systems and processes to successfully grow the business and develop capacity. This included different approaches to the use of seminars, alternative time management approaches within the review system, use of web-based communications and additional ways to develop referrals.
Cobden Chambers, an old factory of four floors situated in the Creative Quarter of Nottingham city centre built in the Victorian era, has been sympathetically restored to house an exciting collection of emerging and established businesses in an open plan co-working environment.
Needing to make fire safety investments involving difficult access, a Notts Fire Officer with a Fire Engineer Degree was consulted to look at the problem. A Building Control Officer was also brought in. Together they quickly came to a compromise with the original design and the outcome was a successful conclusion with the project getting back on track to open within the target time with minimum outlay whilst not compromising safety.
Impression is a digital marketing agency, based in the heart of Nottingham’s Creative Quarter. Founded in November 2012 by Aaron Dicks and Tom Craig and started trading officially in the summer of 2014. Since its inception, Impression has grown quickly from a team of two to a team of more than 20 digital marketing, design and web development professionals.
Impression contacted the D2N2 Growh Hub when they were experiencing record growth and needed to grow their team to deliver new client projects.
In summer 2015, Impression was keen to recruit local graduates and with its graduate scheme and contribution from Nottingham City Council, student recruitment became the right choice and helped the company to grow and to make new jobs for local graduates in the process.
"Impression invests in high quality hardware and this comes at a cost. We had 3 new members of staff ready to join last summer and the grant from NBV supported us in purchasing part funded hardware for these employees.
The funding and support we received helped us to continue our growth and today, we’re proud to be one of the area’s biggest digital marketing agencies, continuing to grow and recruit locally."
- Aaron Dicks, Impression
Mathew Spence approached NBV in August 2015.
He had extensive experience in plumbing, heating, fabrication and welding and wanted to capitalise on his experience by launching his own renewable plumbing company.
From the outset, he was provided with tailored advice from his dedicated NBV adviser David Hallam.
Mathew is now starting to trade as Taylor Made Plumbing, and is confident that he can make his fledgling business a success.
Louise Hesketh of Arabica Finest Coffee and Tea approached NBV in October 2015. Louise already had over a decade of experience of running her own retail shop but dreamt of opening an artisan coffee and tea shop to add to her empire for a long time.
Louise was allocated her NBV business adviser David Hallam who provided her with business mentoring and support to win grant funding.
Derby-based Complete Bottling offers a bottling service to support the requirements of all drink producers, from microbreweries to large drinks companies. Working from a brand new, purpose built site, Complete Bottling has invested in state of the art equipment in order to provide the best service to their customers.
Having recently invested in new premises and equipment, Complete Bottling required assistance with the promotion of their services in order to gain new customers. The Food & Drink Forum's Paul Sheppard arranged for a D2N2 Growth Hub event to be held on the premises, which would not only provide useful information for the microbreweries in attendance, but also provided Complete Bottling with an opportunity to meet new contacts and showcase their facilities.
The Flavourbase Sauce Company is a Derbyshire-based sauce and ingredients manufacturer. Having been operating for twenty years, the Flavourbase Sauce Company has a well-established customer base and is constantly working to develop new products. The Flavourbase Sauce Company were looking to develop a savoury filled product, but required assistance with the development of this. The Food & Drink Forum's Paul Sheppard visited and assessed their needs, and based on this put them in touch with two local manufacturers.
Established in 2005 by Rob and Debra Evans, Derbyshire-based Peak Ales is now a team of 8 supplying both cask and bottles ales to local pubs, hotels and retail outlets. Having received support from in and around the Peak District, Peak Ales pride themselves on supplying their customers with their award winning ales. With the recent relocation to new premises Peak Ales continue to thrive.
With the development of a new brewery, Peak Ales were looking to develop an onsite laboratory. Paul facilitated an introduction between Peak Ales & the University of Nottingham who would be able to assist with the technical support required to develop the laboratory. Alongside this Peak Ales attended the ‘How to Grow Your Brewery’ Growth Hub event, held at Complete Bottling, during which they heard from the University of Nottingham and UK Trade and Investment who provided information on growing a brewery business and spoke about the export opportunities available to brewers.
Datacentre specialists, 2bm, have been around for over a decade. They are committed to providing smart data solutions that also reduce their client’s power consumption and increasing efficiency.
Jerome Baddley (former) NetPositive CEO applied and secured ERDF funding from the Future Factory to produce a detailed technical report on the potential designs for low carbon data centres.
Improving the efficiency of a data centre is central to every project 2bm undertakes. The support we have received from Netpositive has helped raise awareness of the need for low carbon data centres; significant as newly released statistics state that data centres are responsible for 17% of the entire carbon footprint created by the technology industry.
Jerry Skinner, General Manager 2bm.
Your business is unique but the challenges you’ll face in business aren’t, we can help get you through them.
Our free and impartial support is delivered by experienced and expert business advisers, giving you the right advice at the right time for your business.
Contact us today to access a wealth of support, events, business growth programmes and expert advice.
