It’s time to submit your vote for the small business leader of the year award, which will be announced at the Guardian Small Business Showcase Awards 2015 on 11 June.
The annual awards recognise innovation and best practice across the small business sector. The winners of six of the categories - marketing and PR, rising star, cashflow, home business, startup of the year and smarter working - will be decided by a panel of judges and announced at an awards ceremony in London.
However the seventh category, small business leader of the year, is a little different. This award will be given to an inspirational entrepreneur or manager and we’re giving you the chance to decide who that should be.
How does the process work?
A panel of judges whittled a longlist of entries down to a shortlist of three. Below are the three nominations - we want you to consider what each individual has done to stand out from the crowd and to decide which one you feel most deserves the accolade. Voting will close on 15 May. The winner will be announced at the Guardian Small Business Awards ceremony on Thursday 11 June.
Small Business Leader of the Year shortlist
Andrew Daniels, managing director, Degree 53
Nominated by Hayley Stoddart, sales and marketing executive, Degree 53. She says:
Andy, 31, is the managing director of Degree 53, a digital design and build agency, based in Manchester’s Sharp Project. The team’s grown from 25 in 2013 to 53 today.
A young entrepreneur himself, Andy is dedicated to bringing in and retaining young talent. Last year he recruited six graduates, two apprentices and an IT undergraduate. Andy is keen to create transparency and give us a chance to share and address any hurdles we’re facing in our weekly team stand-up meetings.
He recently introduced 15five, a weekly employee feedback system allowing us to discuss tasks confidentially. He welcomes company feedback and appreciates our opinion. We feel part of the business. We vote for our ‘star of the month’, which boosts team morale and fosters mutual respect.
Access to training programmes and events are provided. This ensures we’re up to date with industry trends and continue to develop our skills.
Andy believes in giving promotions when deserved, irrespective of age and experience. Some of those that came into the business as graduates are now senior staff members.
Sickness rates are low and flexitime is available, which is valuable for people with children or who travel far. It also means lateness is virtually non-existent. Andy also offers childcare vouchers and a cycle to work scheme.
Under Andy’s leadership, he is confident in delivering underlying pre-tax profits of £204k as well as being on course to post sales of £2.85m this financial year.
Read more about Andrew Daniels
Neil Grant, director, Ferndale Garden Centre
Nominated by Faye Smith, Keep your Fork Marketing. She says:
Neil Grant is one of three directors of the award winning Ferndale Garden Centre. Established in 1982, it is a medium-sized independent garden centre just south of Sheffield. It is a family run business with a team of 50 friendly and helpful people.
I am nominating Neil for his innovative leadership of the centre’s team through some terrible seasonal weather, which saw tens of thousands slashed off sales. Still he maintained his commitment to inspiring children into gardening.
Neil came up with the concept of an undercover real beach for the summer. Children love the fun of the beach along with creative, traditional beach food in lunchboxes.
Neil has since developed children’s campaigns related to national awareness events such as tomato, vegetable and barbeque week, allotment week, nest box week and national gardening week. Children’s events are offered, such as how to grow a magic bean or make miniature garden. A vegetable puppeteer is planned for May half term.
The cafe has been refurbished and extended and children’s craft activities are proving increasingly popular.
In May, Neil, who also co-hosts the BBC Radio Sheffield gardening programme, is also launching a National Children’s Gardening Week which has industry and local media backing.
He has also brought the Centre into national Growth Accelerator programme (a government backed scheme that helps small businesses improve) , and is a member of the Wilford Group of top independent UK garden centres.
The results are coffee shop growth of over 30% Gift shop, outdoor living and garden plant sales growing too.
Mehdi Nayebi, CEO, KweekWeek
Nominated by Tina Mashaalahi, co-founder. She says:
Firstly, our CEO, Mehdi Nayebi, has been instrumental in taking KweekWeek from a business idea into one of the most cost-effective, time-saving and user-friendly ticketing solutions in the UK. Under Mehdi’s leadership, KweekWeek has grown at a rate of 20% per month since launching in 2012, both in terms of active users, quantity of events offered and revenue generated.
The company is now generating over £150,000 worth of ticket sales monthly, further testament to Mehdi’s entrepreneurial and leadership skills.
Secondly, Mehdi is building an incredibly diverse and multicultural environment. Our team members are from 13 different nationalities, multiple religions and more than 20 languages are spoken, which is an impressive feat for a startup. The team is young as Mehdi wants to encourage and promote more young people to pursue careers in the tech industry. Furthermore, there is an equal male: female ratio, making KweekWeek a very diverse and tolerant company to work for.
Lastly, we entered a market with strong existing incumbents, such as Ticketmaster and Eventbrite, but even though we have considerably smaller funding, KweekWeek is disrupting the ticketing industry as we have already powered over 20,000 new events, have had at least 50,000 downloads of our apps. We have also partnered with some of the top event organisers in the UK, such as HMV, TED and UCL. Some of our big music promoters are now selling more than £25,000 worth of tickets every month.
Find out more about the Guardian Small Business Showcase
Sign up to become a member of the Guardian Small Business Network here for more advice, insight and best practice direct to your inbox.
