Success Stories
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Growing Business - Let it Roll Records
An urge to work in the music community coupled with an encyclopedic record knowledge was enough for husband and wife team Janet and Kieran Smyth to review their careers in television to open vinyl record store and coffee shop ‘Let It Roll’ in May 2018.
“We heard
about the Enterprise Steps project through Newham College marketing” says Janet
“I was looking to invest in a business that we could grow into and once we
realised that we could achieve our ambition we didn’t need much incentive after that – we set up the
company in March 2018 and were open for business in May!”
Janet (a not so silent partner) and Kieran knew that they needed support with some areas where they had less experience, including business management, financial control and marketing.
“Our first priorities were to control finances and ensure we had correct contracts of employment in place.” says Kieran. “Our adviser Neil created an initial support package that included advice and guidance on cashflow, employment contracts and policy/procedure documents.”
Let It Roll
has set itself some challenging start up targets including 160 coffees weekly
for the café and 300 record sales weekly.
To help achieve this mission they have sublet to a “pop-up” café/coffee
bar to be run professionally. They are
working hard to achieve their targets in record sales and have been improving
the shop interiors before embarking on promotion and advertising of the
business. In a short time they have
already been able to achieve a good local reputation and loyal customers.
“We attended
the Enterprise Steps PR Workshop and our adviser encouraged us to put into
action ideas from this workshop together with a focus on our website, social
media and local press coverage.” says
Janet.
The business
duo have felt that they have benefited from having a friendly mentor with whom
they have been able to bounce ideas, helping them to develop the café/coffee
bar, create events and to hire an
experienced record buyer.
Kieran is
reflective about their experiences so far and confident
about their focus for the coming year. “We’re
now working towards our 12 month milestones and hoping to build our events to
give us a higher profile as a music community hub. For anyone else thinking of setting up, we’d
say it’s definitely satisfying running your own business but also a constant
challenge. Our biggest lesson learned
when setting up was to have doubled our set up budget!”
Take the next steps with your business
Enterprise Steps has developed an innovative programme for London-based pre-start up, start-ups and established businesses to support them in growing to their full potential.
Find out more here, and about our latest workshops and events here.
The Enterprise Steps programme is part-funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).