Ahead of this year’s Small Business Saturday event, taking place at the beginning of December, a nationwide zero emissions tour will take to the road in two weeks time, on Monday November 1, with a focus on supporting 6m small businesses across the UK. The tour will be on the road for a month, finishing in London slightly ahead of Small Business Saturday on 4 December.
With 97% of small businesses confirming that sustainability is important to their business (source: BT Skills for Tomorrow and Small Business Britain), the tour will be setting off from the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow.
It will showcase a fleet of eco vehicles reflecting daily life for small businesses and the sustainable switches that many are making or considering making, to include an electric van, car and scooter, as well as a ‘delivery style’ push bike.
For the first time, the tour will be delivering a hybrid format of online and in person activityto include virtual workshops, webinars and mentoring, covering a range of small business topics, as well as on the ground visits and live-streamed interviews with local businesses in cities including Manchester, Belfast, Cardiff, and Edinburgh, as well as coastal towns such Whitley Bay and rural Hereford.
“We’re so excited to get back on the road with this new tour and put the spotlight on fantastic small businesses and their communities, as well as opening up skills and networking opportunities to millions of entrepreneurs using a new hybrid format,” comments Michelle Ovens, CBE, director of Small Business Saturday.
“Running the tour in an environmentally conscious way is incredibly important to us, and in doing so we hope to encourage small businesses to take the leap and pledge to go Net Zero.”
Now in its ninth year in the UK, Small Business Saturday is a grassroots, non-commercial campaign, which celebrates small business success and encourages consumers to ‘shop local’ and to support businesses in their communities.
Last year Small Business Saturday achieved record-breaking success and saw an estimated £1.1 billion spent with small businesses across the UK on the day, according to research from American Express, the campaign’s founder and principal supporter in the UK.
Retailers can get involved with the tour, and book one-to-one mentoring sessions by visiting the My Business Section on the Small Business Saturday website.
As with previous years, the initiative, is highlighting 100 small businesses – one a day for 100 days – leading up to Small Business Saturday on December 4.
(pics 1, 2, 3) Top: From left to right: Tim Rundle-Wood, owner of natural scent gift shop Twoodle in London’s Shoreditch; Jenny Blyth runs Storm In A Teacup, a bespoke gift subscription service, and Holly By Home owns an online home accessories company. All have been selected as Small Biz 100 stars.
