Business Generation

The inventor behind a revolutionary idea has won thousands of pounds to bring it into the shops.

Stephen Britt, a technician at the University of Brighton, has designed a system which uses pedal power to transformcycles into electric bikes.

It enables riders to move quicker and easier up hills.

He built a prototype and entered it into Barclays’ Take One Small Step competition.

He has been handed £50,000 to develop his idea after winning a public vote.

The 40-year-old, who works at the School of Education at Falmer, has set up a company called Fast Forward and hopes to bring the product to the market by this time next year.

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Do you own and operate a franchise? Many entrepreneurs and new small business owners go the route of owning a franchise to get a running start into an established business niche using a recognized name and operating paradigm. However, most often, these entrepreneurs depend too much on the franchisor to perform all search engine optimization tactics. Alas, that folly usually costs the entrepreneur valuable search engine ranking.

The fact is that even with a recognizable name, you need to announce your location, business hours, product or service offerings, special deals, etc. Your franchisor will not do that for you.

You, as a franchise owner, must take ownership of your own SEO efforts.

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Scores of construction jobs have been secured after a building firm won amultimillion-pound contract.

Adenstar, along with many others in the industry, has suffered badly from the economic downturn and laid off more than 80% of its staff.

The company, based in Portslade, which has worked on several major infrastructure projects including Brighton Marina, Sovereign Harbour in Eastbourne and the NewEngland Quarter site in Brighton, saw the size of its workforce slump to just 25 people.

However, Adenstar is now looking to double in size after signing a deal worth £7 million with BA to improve facilities at Heathrowin preparation of the delivery of new aircraft.

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If you are in the market for business financing you may have noticed that the SBA is tentatively reporting a healthy increase in small business lending.

However, finding the right bank for your small business financing needs can still be a time-consuming challenge.

So just who is lending? And what is your best strategy for finding and approaching a bank? Here are five tips to help you find small business friendly banks.

1. Understand the Trending in Lending – Community Banks Favor Small Business

From city streets to Main Street, from suburbs to rural communities – big banks dominate the landscape. In f

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A reader asks:

I’d like to start an Internet dating site. Where can I get hold of the software to be able to start one?  How much is web dating software likely to cost me?

A quick Google suggests there’s quite a bit of free dating site software available, although how good it is, or how well it will fit your needs I can’t say.

If you’re prepared to pay for such software then pretty much any web developer should be able to put together a basic dating site. In their most basic form they are not particularly complex. My brother and I once built one in a little under six hours from concept to workable system. That sai

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No small business owner wants to cut employees. Providing a means to earn a living to your workers can be one of the biggest satisfactions from being a business owner. However, when the economy tightens up and cash flow slows to a trickle, layoffs always come up as an option just to stay in business.

Thankfully, there are ways to hold off layoffs that can help a small business survive until happy days are here again and still retain all the great workers you have. Here are a few tips.

1. Be Straight With Your Employees

   At the first consideration of cutting back expenses, hold a company meeting and let everyone know the situation.

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