On the first Saturday in December, the UK once again showed its overwhelming support for Small Business Saturday, the annual celebration of amazing small and growing businesses. Spend on the day itself was up 15% on the previous year, with over £717 million spent with small businesses before the day was up.
Shoppers flocked to their local high streets, with 80% of local authorities supporting the campaign in some way. Many offered free parking in town centres or held events of their own. With high profile support for the campaign from the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, as well as big names like Karen Brady, Sarah Willingham, Jacqueline Gold, Mark Wright and Levi Roots, it wasn’t long before Small Business Saturday was trending online. In total, 130,000 tweets were posted about Small Business Saturday on the day alone.
This year we were proud to once again support the campaign. We threw the spotlight on some of our fantastic customers who were included in this year’s prestigious Small Biz 100 list. Words of wisdom were offered by Podarok, London Fashion Agency, Bat and Bottle, and Spice Kitchen.
We also hosted a competition to win an iPhone where small businesses shared with us the best business calls that they had ever made or received, congratulations to our winner Sipsey Lingerie. Finally, we joined with Small Business Saturday for a live Twitter Q&A session, giving us the opportunity to offer our advice on how to get your business’ online presence ready for Small Business Saturday and beyond.
Small businesses are crucial for the UK economy, whether they’re the centre of the community on your local high street, or acting as the incubators of innovation online or in ecommerce. Small businesses are incredibly diverse, and many offer something which is totally unique.
We were so pleased to see Small Business Saturday in 2016 was bigger and better than ever, and we absolutely loved being a part of it again this year. It was fantastic in particular to catch up with the Small Business Saturday bus tour when it stopped in York on its travels across the UK.
Small Business Saturday 2016 might be over, but we’ll be continuing to support small businesses across the UK throughout the year.
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