14 roundtable: southern entrepreneurs


Hosted by EY, UBS, Osborne Clarke and The Business Magazine, this Roundtable held at The Royal Berkshire Conference Centre, Reading involved entrepreneurs at different stages of growth in their respective businesses ...


Managing entrepreneurial business growth pains


Participants


Gareth Anderson: Partner, accountants and business advisers, EY


Claire Edmunds: CEO, Clarify, business development specialists


Toby Johnson: Client adviser, UBS Wealth Management


Rich Marsh: CEO, Licx UK, intimate wellbeing


Julianne Ponan: CEO, Creative Nature Superfoods


John Rees: Commercial director, Redwood Technologies Group


Sharon Richey: CEO, BEcause Brand Experience


David Sanger: Serial entrepreneur and non executive director (NED), Rollover


Sara Valentine Partner, lawyers Osborne Clarke LLP


Lined up to debate: our roundtable team Journalist John Burbedge reports the roundtable highlights


So, at what stage of growth is your business?


Claire Edmunds said Clarify had been through several growth stages but 12 months ago began to plateau. “The business was performing quite well, running adequately, but we needed to challenge ourselves outside our comfort zone to take the business up a gear. So, we took time out to see what fundamental changes were needed.


“As a relatively small organisation with a simple management structure, we needed experts coming into the business to shake us up a bit. When you’ve worked together for several years, you can become very comfortable in how you operate, and sometimes you need a challenge to your way of thinking.


“We needed to find out what new strategies and ways of growing the business were out there. It’s been an interesting process to go through.


“As an entrepreneur your appetite for risk


can vary, but we are back now with a fairly high-risk appetite, challenging the business to start doing different things. That’s quite energising in itself. Our proposition is good, the timing is right with market opportunities occurring, and our focus is now to shift the business up to that higher gear.”


Experiential marketing specialist Sharon Richey brings brands to life in a memorable, meaningful and magical way. Her company, and the marketing channel experiential marketing, have developed steadily over the past 20 years. “We now operate in a very cluttered and competitive marketplace. Whereas we were once one of maybe half a dozen or so experiential agencies, we are now one of 20,000 marketing communications organisations, and one of almost 150 experiential specialists. So our challenge is to now shine brighter and better against our competitors, and to this we need to market our brand more cleverly than ever before.”


John Rees said his company was now in scale-up mode. “We sell through very large global partners and also have a


David Murray: Managing director and publisher of The Business Magazine, chaired the discussion


Claire Edmunds


small number of direct clients that require high levels of servicing. Typically we test new markets through our partners and then follow up with a direct sales team if appropriate.”


Business has been grown in different countries by appointing in-country managers and establishing localised teams and networks. “We are now looking at multiple European and global markets and will adopt more of this approach this year.”


Business THE M A GA ZINE www.businessmag.co.uk TM


Julianne Ponan’s superfoods business began in 2012 and has two advisory NEDs, helping with margin structuring and financial matters. “Last year we doubled turnover but lost out on profit.” By generating additional


THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – THAMES VALLEY – MARCH 2016


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