Home
businesses boom
As redundancy hits more people, more
businesses are being set up at home.
‘Home’ is the most popular location for UK
business start-ups, according to Krista Waddell, the Billionairess CEO of
American gold-party organiser Ounces to Pounds (www.ounces2pounds.co.uk), with
more than 60% starting from home in Britain and 1,400 new businesses launched
every week.
In total, 2.1million Brits have home-based businesses. The highest growths in
home businesses are from Mums, followed by young people and over 50s. “We’ve
seen an absolute explosion of home businesses in Britain in the last year,” says
Waddell.
“Avon are on a massive expansion drive in Britain at the moment with a campaign
fronted by Reese Witherspoon and mentoring for ‘women working from home’ from
Karren Brady amongst others.” “The Body Shop has realised this, launching a
home-selling network this year for the first time since they launched in 1976.
The Body Shop home-business and the gold party concept has really taken off in
Britain because we both realise it’s a way of tapping into a huge pool of
unused talent, Mums who want to work in the evening whilst their partners or
friends babysit. Childcare is so expensive otherwise,” says Waddell. Enterprise
Nation champions home-based businesses and according to its survey, 87 percent
of home-working parents felt that home-working was good for their children”.
“The guilt factor is not there for Mums who can raise their kids at home,
whilst still being entrepreneurial in their spare time”.
The fastest growing sectors for home businesses in the UK are in the business
and professional services sector (such as accountants and website developers),
online trading (such as eBay-ers), personal services (such as home interior
designers, hairdressers, party planners), food (products and caterers), and
domestic energy (including people selling excess DIY ‘green’ power back into
the national grid).
Home business owners are particularly IT savvy and make full use of the
internet and software applications to manage their business and their life. In
previous entries to the Enterprise Nation Home Business Award (sponsored in
2010 by Ounces to Pounds), 98 percent of entrants had a business website and 64
percent were utilising e-commerce platforms. In further research carried out
for BT, 42 percent of home business owners confirmed they go online for
business advice and 86 percent agreed that technology is more important to them
as a home based business than in an office environment.
7 September 2010
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