Press Ahead scoops business award

North East PR and marketing agency Press Ahead has proven it's 'the business', after winning a prestigious regional award.

The Sunderland based agency scooped the Small Business of the Year Award, at the Sunderland Echo Portfolio Business Awards 2009. The award was presented at a glittering ceremony, held at the Stadium of Light.

Press Ahead managing director and If we can, you can member, Russell Borthwick, said: "We felt that as a business, we had made great progress in a difficult trading environment, but that we were still perhaps a little way short of achieving an accolade like this - given the number of excellent small businesses in the area.

"The award is genuinely a team one - reflecting the input of staff and the confidence shown in us by our clients and partners. Just over five years after the business started, this feels like a coming of age - onwards and upwards."

The Small Business of the Year Award is the Portfolio Awards' most hotly contested accolade. Press Ahead beat off competition from a large number of entrants, and was chosen over four other shortlisted companies.

The judges commended Press Ahead on establishing itself as "a leading player in its field, both in the city and on a wider stage", adding that "it has grown its reputation by continually exceeding the expectations of its many clients, from Wearside and beyond".

NORTH-EAST DIGITAL MINDS SET SAIL FOR SWEDEN

Entrepreneurs and business leaders forge new links at conference

Some of the north-east’s most creative business minds are heading off to Sweden next week, with their sights set on forging new links with Scandinavia.

Their destination is the ‘Digital Minds: The Nordic Light’ conference in Gävle, a historic city two hours north of Stockholm.

Speakers at the event include Codeworks CEO Herb Kim, James TerKeurst from the University of Teesside’s Institute of Digital Innovation, and Steve Blanks of Newcastle-based Fat Frog Media.

A number of the region’s digital creative businesses are also making the trip, hoping to encounter new ideas and global business contacts.

Georgia Rakusen, of digital arts production company Haus Projects, is one of those attending the conference.

“Digital Minds: The Nordic Light is a conference all about cross-pollination and creative people sharing ideas,“ she explains. “I was at the Thinking Digital conference in Gateshead earlier this year, so I know what a huge impact this sort of cross-genre event can have. I’m very excited to see what new opportunities we can develop collaboratively with our Swedish digital counterparts.”

Other digital creative entrepreneurs attending the conference include:

Rob Colling of Gateshead-based internetsubtitling.com, which produces subtitles and captions for web video

Frances Calvey of Middlesbrough-based video production firm Kirkwood Media

Adam Green of Assyria Game Studio in Middlesbrough.

"It's an amazing opportunity and I'm looking forward to representing the north-east internationally,” says Frances. “Spreading the word about what digital industries have to offer in the region is an exciting prospect."

“In difficult times like these, there's more reason than ever to establish relationships outside the UK, with an eye to trading globally rather than just regionally or nationally,” says Rob. “The region’s business community is going to be very well represented in Gavle, and it’s great to see that north-eastern firms and organisations are so far ahead of the game when it comes to thinking internationally.”

Grand Designs star to launch period homes business

Two local business women launch their online homes restoration service next month with the help of a special guest – and they are giving away free tickets to the launch.

Restoration & Beyond, which helps period home owners and self builders to source specialist products and services for their homes, is being launched at the Home Building & Renovating Show in Harrogate on 6th November.

Christine Pearce from Hartlepool, and Paula Smith from Peterlee, have spent the last year developing their business and creating a service that is currently not available anywhere else.

And they will be joined for the launch ceremony by Francis Shaw of Peel Castle, whose inspirational transformation of the 14th century Yorkshire ruin was a favourite of viewers of the Channel 4 Grand Designs series.

Mr Shaw will be at Restoration & Beyond’s exhibition stand (number 335, in Hall B) at 3pm on the 6th November to cut the ribbon and officially launch the new web site.


Restoration & Beyond are giving away free tickets to the show with visitors to their stand also having the opportunity to win a two nights stay at Peel Castle. To claim your free tickets simply follow the link at http://www.restorationandbeyond.co.uk/ and sign up for their e-newsletter.


Looking forward to the launch, Christine Pearce says: “Restoration & Beyond is an exciting new concept that will revolutionise Period Home and Self-Build shopping. It is not a directory but a time-efficient way of sourcing and purchasing everything from reclaimed stone to works of art, as well as the people with the expertise to restore period homes sympathetically and help self-builders to create new homes to the highest of design and eco standards.

“It is the only website where products for this market can be purchased from many different companies through one simple checkout and where service providers can be found through 'mini-sites' within the site, rather than directory listings, making it much easier to use”.

Christine is herself a period home owner and for the past 17 years has been frustrated by the difficulty in finding the right products and services for the restoration of her home. Restoration & Beyond aims to save others that frustration while at the same time promoting a wide range of independent home-related businesses.

To find out more, visit http://www.restorationandbeyond.co.uk/

From Flying Start to Exciting Growth: Richard Mairs Update

When Richard Mairs first shared his If we can, you can story a year ago, it was also a bit of a fond farewell to this side of the pond as he had just been awarded a place on the prestigious NCGE Kauffman Scholarship as a ‘Flying Start Global Entrepreneur”. It included training with NESTA here in the UK, before heading to America for 6 months to study at Harvard, Stanford and MIT, and visit innovative companies such as Google, Cisco and Adobe. We asked Richard if he would mind keeping in touch and letting us know how he got on.

And keep in touch he did. We received a great email from Richard once he returned from his adventures and things certainly have moved on from the last time we spoke.

Before jetting away, Richard was running Gizmo Visual Studios in Middlesbrough, a multimedia studio and consultancy all about inspiring creativity. Richard set out to do this by combining cutting edge technology and visual media to both inspire and educate people about the creative thinking process.

During Richard’s time in America, he met his new business partner, Jonathan Lloyd, a fellow Global Scholar. They decided to combine forces and are together now running Falling Pixel Ltd (http://www.fallingpixel.com/). Falling Pixel is a high quality 3D asset marketplace and proudly sits as the leading marketplace in Europe.

They supply their services to a range of industries that demand high quality content from architectural visualisation to interactive education and even military simulation.

Richard says, “Supplying these resources saves companies time in the development process, development costs and allows smaller companies to actively compete on a higher level, enabling them to create bigger and better projects through outsource of content .”

At the moment Richard and Jonathan are both working hard to continue to growth of both the marketplace and newer arms such as 3D Request ™ and FPLabs which they will be working on in the coming months. Labs focuses on research and development of new technology in areas such as augmented reality, real time rendering and stereoscopics. They are also looking to work with Universities and strategic partnerships to strengthen their offering.

Richard commented, “It’s still early days having only been trading three years but we are excited about the future and the new direction of the company.”

If we can, you can Unplugged events are launched!

We always said that this was all about building a virtual community, but there’s nothing quite like getting together with your colleagues to share ideas and experiences in person, face-to-face.

‘If We Can You Can’ is hitting the road and coming to a venue near you!

The Unplugged events are an un-missable opportunity for you to meet likeminded entrepreneurs from the IWCYC community in a relaxed and informal environment.

We have two fantastic speakers from the community who will share their entrepreneurial highs and lows with our guests, and there will be a Q&A and a chance to discuss common challenges and aspirations, followed by a delicious supper and time for you to mingle and chat.
Date: Wednesday, October 21st

Venue: The Sporting Lodge Inn, Middlesbrough

Time: 6.30pm - 7:00pm arrival
9.30pm event close

Our first Unplugged event is coming to the Tees Valley. Our speakers will be Mark Easby, Managing Director of Better Brand Agency and Claire Mitchell, of http://www.astonmitchell.com/.

Mark Easby, born and bred in the Tees Valley, started Better Brand Agency in September 2008 with two friends. Better specialises in brand, design, marketing and social media campaigns, already has more than 20 clients and recently scooped the Best Social Media Campaign at the North East Digital Awards.

Claire Mitchell left her job to set up and run her own marketing consultancy, ‘Claire Mitchell Consultancy’, which she has done for the past three years. As well as this, she also runs http://www.astonmitchell.com/, an online men's make-up retail business with her business partner Kate Jones, and counts Barack Obama’s personal make-up artist as one of her key suppliers.

Tickets are free to attend, but places are limited, so book early to avoid disappointment! We would also encourage you to bring along a friend and welcome them along to the If We Can, You Can community!

To book your place or for any more information about our Unplugged events, please email will@entrepreneursforum.net or call 0191 2267488, and let us know if you would like to bring along a friend or a colleague.

“If you’re thinking about starting a business yourself, I believe the most important thing to do is to seek the right support- business support, partners, colleagues, and making sure that your family and friends are right behind you. I can’t recommend this enough.” Mark Easby

“We love what we do, we enjoy our work, we have a great knowledge of the market and it’s felt effortless because we believe in what we do and we have fun.”
Claire Mitchell

As we live in this multi-media age, each event will also have its own PLUGGED section on the website – and we’ll use the blog and twitter to get the discussions started and help us to identify what you want to hear about and talk about.