Once upon a time home was where you put your feet up after a hard day’s work.
Not any more. The past year has seen a surge in the number of home-based
businesses, fuelled by a rise in redundancies and a fall in the number of
jobs available. Now more than 60% of all new businesses are started from
home.
According to Enterprise Nation, the home business website, there are 2.8m such
businesses in the UK, generating a combined annual turnover of £284 billion.
Indeed, home businesses have become so important that this year’s Global
Entrepreneurship Week, which starts tomorrow, has for the first time
designated one of the days as Home Enterprise Day.
It is not hard to see why starting a business at home is so appealing. It is
far cheaper than renting an office, there are few other overheads and, at
least in the beginning, you can often combine running the business with
looking after children or even holding on to a full-time job.
Deborah Duddle, 35, is typical of the new wave of home business entrepreneurs.
When she was made redundant from a workwear firm earlier this year, she
decided to start a business from her home in Ruthin, North Wales, instead of
trying to look for another job.
“I had always wanted to do my own thing and I thought it was now or never,”
she said.
Duddle used personal savings of £20,000 to start her business Izzyandfloyd.com
— named after her two-year-old daughter and the family dog — which sells
handmade personalised baby gifts.
One benefit of running her business from home is that she can look after Izzy
instead of sending her to nursery five days a week. “I really missed out
before,” said Duddle. “Now I can watch her growing up.”
Haley Hill, 31, started her upmarket dating agency Elect Club (electclub.co.uk)
from her home in south London four years ago after leaving her job managing
the pharmacy at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. She began the business
with £1,000, which she used to buy a computer and some business cards. Her
agency now has a turnover of £500,000 and more than 3,000 members, which has
so far led to six marriages, thirteen engagements and two babies. There has
been an unexpected benefit too — earlier this year Hill herself got married
to someone she met through her agency.
“It wasn’t my intention to set up as a home-based business but when I started
looking into the idea of renting a serviced office I realised I didn’t
really need an office because I could do everything from home,” she said.
“The benefits are enormous. As well as lower overheads I have huge
flexibility. I can work until midnight and, if I can’t sleep, I can get up
and start work early. It also means I can keep a dog.”
Husband and wife Brent and Marilena Shaw have a very good reason for choosing
to run their online luggage business Swiss luggage.com from their home in
Loughborough — they both have full-time day jobs. They work on the business
in the evenings and at weekends, and outsource the packing and posting of
orders to a fulfilment company, which takes delivery of their stock and
stores it in its warehouse. During the day a call centre handles customer
enquiries.
Brent Shaw, 51, who works as an IT manager during the day, said being able to
run a business from home had enabled them to start their business without
having to give up their jobs, thereby reducing the risks involved.
“The only time we are able to work on the business is in the evenings and at
weekends and the advantage of working from home is that you just walk
downstairs in the morning and you are in the office. Technology has given us
the freedom to be able to do this.”
Scott Cain, acting chief executive of Enterprise UK, which runs Global
Entrepreneurship Week, said: “Home enterprise is a growing trend that has
fantastic benefits for the UK economy, with more than 60% of small
businesses starting in this way. People are attracted by the freedom and
flexibility that comes with self-employment, the low risk and low cost of
working from home and the empowerment of turning their passions into
profits.”
Emma Jones, founder of Enterprise Nation, said: “We are seeing a growing
number of people starting and growing a business from home. Many people who
have been made redundant are seizing the opportunity to do something they
have always wanted to do.”
However, George Derbyshire, chief executive of the National Federation of
Enterprise Agencies, warned that the growth in home businesses presented a
new challenge that councils and town planners needed to address.
“A revolution in planning is needed — more houses built to suit work
lifestyles, a relaxation of council tax and planning rules to encourage more
home-based businesses and more business facilities as part of housing
developments.
“They tend to insist on schools and doctors’ surgeries being put in new
developments — but what about coffee and print shops? They are useful
facilities and a great encouragement to networking.”
Free tickets for home business conference
The Sunday Times has five free tickets, each worth £50, to Enterprise
Nation’s home business conference to give away to the first five readers who
e-mail us at smallbusiness@sunday-times.co.uk
with their name and contact number.
The conference takes place in London on Friday, November 20. For more
details go to enterprisenation.com.
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