Small Business Saturday

Mark Hunter Excerpts

Thursday 4th December 2014 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Mosley]

My hon. Friend has got to the nub of the debate. As well as highlighting small business Saturday, the debate is about highlighting the support that is available for small businesses across the country. I will talk later in my speech about what the Government are doing. I am sure that the Minister is quite capable of banging the drum and telling us all about the good work that he and the Government have done to support small businesses.

[Mark Hunter (Cheadle) (LD)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. He is being generous with his time, and I hope that he gets the opportunity to proceed more quickly. I put it to him that although small business Saturday is massively important and a very healthy thing—that is why we are all here to support it—we really need communities across the length and breadth of the country to understand the need to support their local shops all year round. Small business Saturday is a welcome initiative, but by itself it is not enough. Retailers on the high street face a great deal of challenge, and we need to get more people to support local shops on a regular basis. Does my hon. Friend agree with me on that point? I hope that he will have the opportunity to say what more we can all do—not just the Government—collectively to support our local small businesses.

[Stephen Mosley]

I support what the hon. Gentleman says. He raises the points that I wanted to raise in my conclusion, so he is denying me all the glory of raising those issues myself.

By working together, local communities, local groups and local businesses can boost their small shops and therefore boost their local area. One of the most inspiring, exciting and successful ideas for doing that is small business Saturday. Simply, small business Saturday exists to support, inspire and promote small businesses. It started in the United States of America in 2010, and it has been a key feature of the pre-Christmas shopping period and become established on the first Saturday after Thanksgiving. Small business Saturday was conceived, launched and is still heavily backed by American Express, with the intention of encouraging shoppers to patronise small, local bricks-and-mortar businesses.

In America small business Saturday has been heavily promoted via a nationwide radio and television advertising campaign, with a heavy focus on social media that has generated more than 1 million Facebook likes and hundreds of thousands of tweets using the Twitter hashtags #SmallBusinessSaturday and #SmallBizSaturday. Many politicians and business groups in the US have backed the campaign, with many launching campaigns in their local area. Last weekend, on small business Saturday in the US, President Obama and his daughters, Malia and Sasha, went shopping at the Politics and Prose bookstore in Washington DC, where they picked up 17 books. Additionally, many small business owners in the US have started to run marketing specials on small business Saturday to capitalise on the boost in foot and online traffic, as most customers at this time of year are actively shopping for the Christmas period.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow a wonderful speech by the hon. Member for High Peak (Andrew Bingham). I congratulate the hon. Member for City of Chester (Stephen Mosley) on securing the debate. He spoke well, and I am sure that the city of Chester will be a thriving, vibrant place on Saturday and that he will enjoy it, as we all will.

Hon. Members have made the point that there is a wealth of experience in the House. A number of us come from business backgrounds, from all sorts of disciplines, and I recognise the endeavour and energy and the hours that people put in, which the hon. Member for High Peak extolled. Having run small businesses myself—a computer software house and a solicitor’s practice—I know exactly what he means. People not only work all hours, but they are often the last to be paid. Those stresses should never, ever be underestimated.

It is right that every day should be small business day. However, the whole point of small business Saturday is to draw attention to the need for us to support our local businesses. This is the one day that we can really shine a light on them and, hopefully, it will establish practices and shopping behaviours.

I am looking forward to Saturday. If last year’s was anything to go by, we have a lot to look forward to. Last year in Middlesbrough I met dozens of businesses over two days: we claimed Friday as well, making it a two-day celebration of the brilliance and endeavour of so many small businesses. There are some 4,000 small businesses in the borough of Middlesbrough. I apologise if I trespass on to the territory of my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Tom Blenkinsop), but I will talk about the entire borough. Debates such as this bring home the total privilege it is not only to represent and speak up for such terrific people, but to go around my constituency and see at close quarters what brilliance and drive we have in our communities. I am sure that that is the case for all Members and their constituencies.

This debate is a cross-party celebration of small businesses, but I hope that Government Members will not mind too much if I mark out for some attention the shadow Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills for coming up with the idea of bringing small business Saturday from America across the pond to the UK. That mood of genuine cross-party celebration was captured well by the hon. Member for City of Chester.

Last year, I took the opportunity to visit small businesses in the shopping centres and in the town centre, and it was incredibly uplifting and revealing. The range of businesses was remarkable, and it was wonderful to speak to so many entrepreneurs who took to their trades and crafts with such enthusiasm, from a one-man leaded window manufacturer with an overflowing order book, to some brilliant young people with a thriving business digitising outdated film formats, to some terrific catering businesses in the superb Baker Street Kitchen and the Olde Young Tea House, which was so busy that we could not get a seat. I am delighted to say that the latter business has been such a roaring success in the intervening 12 months that it has had to move into bigger premises.

I also had the opportunity to call in at the magnificent Psyche clothing store on Linthorpe road. I was delighted last week to attend a sparkling event at the store to honour its founder Steve Cochrane, who rightly received a special award from the mayor for his endeavour and his massive contribution to our town. Steve epitomises the energy and drive of entrepreneurs in Middlesbrough. He started off extremely small some decades ago, with a small shop selling an eclectic mix of bespoke clothing. He moved into bigger premises some 10 years ago, and then moved into the former Uptons department store. That was a ridiculously ambitious project, but it has been an overwhelming success, and it is so much more than a fashion store; as the mayor himself said, it is a work of art in its own right. People come from far and wide to enjoy the fabulous fashions in a wonderful environment. Since opening and establishing such a presence, that business has attracted other fashion retailers and idiosyncratic bars and eateries into the vicinity, creating a terrific buzz on Linthorpe road.

What really impressed me when I visited Baker street was that it has real cachet and is full of stylish and distinctive fashion outlets. There is a real Carnaby street feel about the place. Again, unique businesses have attracted others, including two very successful micro-pubs. There is Sherlocks for one and the Twisted Lip for another one—or even two. I should also mention the long-standing family businesses that are synonymous with our local town stories. They are part of our local histories and narratives. An example in my constituency is the magnificent, family-run, three generations old HS Interiors on North Ormesby road. The same can be said of W.H. Watts on Parliament road, which has been selling prams and buggies to generations of Middlesbrough families. There are so many businesses like that, including the famous Jack Hatfield Sports.

[Mark Hunter]

I am enjoying listening to the name-checking of so many different businesses in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency. He paints an encouraging picture of progress. Does he agree that one thing we should do on such occasions as this is pay particular tribute to small shops and businesses that go the extra mile? As he was talking, I was thinking of all the small businesses in my patch that come together to organise events of their own. That is not just Christmas fairs or switching on the Christmas lights but events throughout the year. Usually it is the traders themselves who show entrepreneurship and initiative to get together to try to make the shopping centre, the village high street or whatever it is more attractive. They are the people who deserve to succeed, because the days when shopkeepers could sit back and wait for people to come to them are a thing of the past. I invite him to pay tribute to all those who go that extra mile and put on those events for the benefit of the wider community and not just for themselves.

[Andy McDonald]

I would be delighted to accept that invitation. I pay tribute to those people, because we see it in our communities—parades of shops where people go the extra mile, like the small greengrocer who decides, “I will do some bespoke delivery services. I will ensure that the entire parade of shops can market itself and get materials out to people.” We see good instances of people’s innovative drive. Those people are absolutely vital to our communities. If they disappeared from our sub-regional shopping centres, we would be all the poorer for it. I pay tribute to them, because they are the lifeblood of our communities. Their businesses are the ones that define our local economies. The big multinational stores bring much to our high streets and shopping centres, but it is the smaller local businesses that mean so much to our communities. As the hon. Member for City of Chester pointed out, for each pound spent in small businesses, the vast majority of that pound—some 60p—circulates in the local economy. That should always be borne in mind.

What was self-evident last year was the huge number of young women who had started their own businesses, especially in the fashion street I mentioned, but in other places as well. I am delighted that my friend and colleague Louise Baldock, the prospective parliamentary candidate for Stockton South, will be with the Stockton business women’s forum providing encouragement, support and opportunities to local female entrepreneurs and business leaders. She has her own marketing consultancy offering services to a variety of businesses, and I look forward to welcoming her into the House in 2015, where I am sure her experience and expertise in business will make a significant contribution.

Without any shadow of a doubt, we want to praise our local small businesses, but we should also focus on the need to create the conditions that enable businesses to flourish. I want to mention the work of Middlesbrough council, which has invested in the regeneration of a redundant building in the heart of the town centre that was riddled with asbestos. It has also underwritten a project to create a new hotel with 138 bedrooms. The beauty of that project is that it will bring people to the town and encourage and stimulate business activity in its immediate vicinity. Those sorts of projects and initiatives cannot be ignored, and I pay tribute to the council.