After gaining over 15 years experience working for a large organisation, blind fitter, John Kelly decided to take the leap to self employment and with help from the North East Business and Innovation Centre (BIC) Cosmic Blinds was established.
John has been fitting blinds his whole career and decided the time was right to start working for himself and shortly after contacted the BIC and it was here he was appointed business adviser, Chris Craig. The programme run by the BIC is being part financed by the European Union’s ERDF Competitiveness Programme 2007-13, securing £1.47m ERDF investment. Working in a consortium led by North East Enterprise Agencies Ltd (NEEAL) local Enterprise and Development Agencies in the North East have matched this ERDF investment with £1.47m of their own funds. John explains:
“I heard about the BIC through the jobcentre and I booked up and had regular meetings with Chris about the best way going forward into self employment. I already had my business plan drafted so Chris helped tweak and amend as well as giving advice on the cash flow side of the business.
“The support Chris gave was great and helped massively I have been focusing on building up my customer base and advertising, I spend a lot of time on social media, working on my website and getting my van signage done.
“Reaction to the business has been fantastic and I’ve passed what I had originally forecast, I planned to have about four customers a week but since I started in April have served about 70 clients from all over the North East.
“It’s a bit scary to tell you the truth, but it’s very satisfying there is more freedom for managing my time.
“My advice to anyone else thinking about starting up their own business is to just go for it, if you put the hard work and effort in you can make it work.
“My plans for the short term future will be to employ staff so I can have even more flexibility as well as taking on more jobs. But my big dream is to get myself a little unit so I can start to manufacture the blinds myself, and compete with bigger companies and I’d certainly consider moving to the BIC when that time comes.”
Business adviser Chris Craig added: Business adviser Chris Craig added: “John already had the foundations laid out for his business so it was just a case of fine tuning the business plan to ensure his company got off to the best start.
“I wish John all the best and hope to see him as a tenant here at the BIC very soon!”
If you are thinking about self employment give the business start up team a call and book your free appointment on 0191 516 6149.
For more information on Cosmic Blinds visit www.cosmicblinds.co.uk.
