Start Small Business - UK

E.F. Schumacher argued that our current pursuit of profit and progress which promotes giant organizations has resulted in gross economic inefficiency, environmental pollution and inhumane working conditions. He proposed a system of intermediate technology, based on smaller working units and regional workplaces, utilizing local resources. This follow-up book by his daughter takes up the themes of economic and political "smallness" for the new millennium. It offers an alternative to global consumerism.

How to Start a Small Business in the UK

Start With Some Preliminaries

Before we look at how to start a small business in UK, let us look at the general issues of starting any small business. You need to clarify your ideas about these issues and develop a business plan before you are really ready to start.

Preliminaries to Developing Your Business Plan

Unlike a business idea, a business plan is a detailed action program that elaborates on the many specifics of how you are going to set up and run your small business. A business plan is an essential document if you plan to seek financial assistance for your business.

You need to do some research and clarify your ideas in specific terms before you can start writing your business plan. In this section, we look at the major issues involved. You would have to decide how you will tackle these issues.

Markets & Marketing: What need does your product or service fulfill? Who are your customers and what are their preferences? Who will be your competitors for the business of these customers? How will you get the customers buy from you rather than these competitors?
Technical Know-how: Unless it is a simple business (which would most likely be highly competitive) you would need to provide or arrange the technical know-how to produce your product or render your service. What arrangements have you made for this?
Operational Viability: A business can make adequate profit only if it can sell sufficient numbers at profitable selling prices. You would have to estimate the sales volumes you can achieve month by month, and the direct costs and expenses you will incur to achieve these volumes. What do these estimates reveal about achieving profitable levels of operations?
Financial Requirements: What would be the total cost of setting up the small business? How much more money will you need to carry on the business till cash inflows begin to equal or exceed cash outflows? How will you raise this money?
Licenses & Permits: Does you industry need special licenses? What routine licenses and permits will you need? What progress has been made in obtaining these?

In addition to the "core" issues outlined above, you need to resolve other issues like the form in which you will do business (sole trader, partnership, company), the location of your business, premises and complying with various government formalities (such as tax registrations).

Resources for Handling the Preliminary Work

The following articles on this site will help you get a more detailed look at these issues. Read the different articles under the section How to Start a Small Business. The various articles under that section will help you understand the issues.

What business to Start?
How to research the market
How to raise funds
How to develop a business plan
What are the steps involved in starting a small business?

Let us now look at the small business support agency of UK.

Use Businesslink Resources to Clarify Your Business Ideas First

BusinessLink is the primary agency you can approach to learn how to start a small business in UK. It is a national agency that works through local experts, and charges no fee for consultation services.

You can get information and help in attending to all the issues, both core and incidental, from the resources provided by Businesslink. Both the Businesslink website and the various guides that you can either download or get by post, will help you immensely to develop a preliminary idea for starting your small business. In fact, you can almost get a checklist of how to start a small business in UK.

Once you have the basic ideas, you can approach the nearest Businesslink centre to help you develop the ideas into a detailed business plan and raise needed finance.

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SmallBusiness-Start.com is a resource for small businesspersons. It will be adding new articles continuously and these articles will review:

The factors that affect small business success
Details of specific small businesses, such as restaurants and different kinds of services
Techniques and tools, such as breakeven analysis that small businesspersons can use
Government small business support programs in different countries

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Start a Small Business