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What to make of BrewDog’s latest wheeze: asking their shareholders to promote the Fraserburgh-based craft brewers by dropping off marketing packs in their local bars.
Until recently, BrewDog have supplied the off licence trade and sold mainly to supermarkets and drink shops. They are beginning to expand into the on trade and have mobilis
Did anyone watch the last episode of Dragon’s Den? Ralf Klinnert, a Livingston-based entrepreneur, walked away with £120,000 funding for his Funky Moves interactive fitness centre. You can watch a clip of it on the BBC website.
Despite Duncan Bannatyne commenting that ‘only an idiot would invest in this’, Theo Paphitis and Peter Jones put up the cash in return for a 50% stake in Klinnert’s busine
The blog was cheered by a brief item in The Scotsman in which the Royal Bank of Scotland announced that Scotland had a higher growth rate of start-ups than the rest of the country. Usually, Scotland is portrayed as lagging behind when it comes to entrepreneurial spirit; so it was heartening to read that the bank had supported some 11,000 new businesses over the last twelve months. Those 11,000 new businesses represent an 18% increase on the previous year. According to the report, start-up growth was up by a smaller 11% across the rest of the UK. Any warm feeling of optimism was quickly frozen by a single line in the readers’ comments column with one wag noting that eleven thousand is ‘an awful lot of
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It’s only Tuesday as I write and already this week’s economics and business news offers wildly differing predictions for Scotland’s future. At the weekend, The Ernst and Young Item Club released a report which predicted that Scotland’s economy should start to pick up in 2011 but that a weak export base and public sector cuts are likely to mean that the country will under perform the rest of the UK. On Monday, the Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship at the University of Strathclyde did little to lighten the outlook with a survey which suggested that Scotland’s rate of business start-ups, already low compared to
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You have to admire the chutzpah of Andy Inglis, an East Lothian-based entrepreneur, who has hit upon the idea of bottling Hebridean seawater and selling it to chefs at £4.95 for three litres.
Branded as Acquamara, the water comes from around the island of Berneray. Inglis purifies it and bottles it before selling it on.
It is supposed to enhance the flavour of seafood cooked using it and Inglis has even managed to put a health conscious spin on the stuff.
Top chefs such as Roy Brett of Edinburgh
Edinburgh was recently crowned Europe's Best Small City of the Future for a second successive year.
With apologies to our Vistage Scotland members who are not based in Edinburgh, we thought we would draw your attention to a report on the European Cities and Regions of the Future as compiled by fDi Magazine, an offshoot of the Financial Times.
The full report is here but, in summary, judged on
Last year’s financial upheavals sparked important changes in the global business landscape but, thanks to the troubles of institutions such as the Royal Bank of Scotland, they had a special significance for the Scottish business community. This year is likely to be no less interesting with a general election, a possible Scottish independence referendum and continuing uncertainty over the financial outlook all promising, or threatening, to shake things up. Vistage members already benefit from the regular predictions of Roger Martin Fagg and, in particular, his forecasts for the economy in the Vistage white paper, The New Economy: Prospering In The New Business Landscape. CA Magazine, the magazine from the
Congratulations to Vistage Scotland member Andy Lothian who has just been nominated by Scottish Enterprise for the IoD Scotlands’ prestigious Director of the Year Awards in the Enabling the Best Use of Skills category.
The nomination follows on from Andy’s 2009 achievements, notably the opening of
