Work Places: enabling business growth

We work closely with local boroughs to ensure that a sufficient supply of low-cost and managed workspace is available within the Park and surrounding area. We’re setting the standard on our own land in Hackney Wick and Bromley-by-Bow. This involves working with developers and workspace providers to ensure space is available to maximise the commercial viability of businesses at all stages, as well as providing enterprise support to help them grow and flourish.

Another way of fostering a local enterprise ecosystem is the use of temporarily vacant land in and around Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. There are a number of projects in development that will provide temporary, ‘meanwhile’ workspace to help nurture and grow independent businesses.

 

For more information e-mail: [email protected]

Our peer-to-peer accelerator programme for small business owners, ECHO++, has supported over 150 businesses locally since it started in 2014. Run on an economy of time and skills as opposed to pounds and pence, the programme delivers sector-specific advice, mentoring and networking to small businesses. Designed for local sole traders, freelancers, start-ups, micro and small to medium enterprises, Echo++ is helping to build the knowledge, skills, services and resources of the local business community.

 

We’ve also partnered with the Trampery and the Fashion District to deliver the Sustainable Fashion Accelerator, a bespoke business support programme that endeavours to address the underlying obstacles currently facing fashion labels locally.

 

Whilst East London is home to 23% of the capital’s fashion businesses along with the fashion industry consequently contributing £30 billion annually to the UK economy, the industry plainly faces significant challenges to its resilience; the failure rate amongst luxury fashion labels lays considerably higher compared to other export industries. The programme focuses on three key areas: sustainability, people and commercialisation. It is designed to reduce the failure rate of overall fashion businesses in the five years post undertaking the Programme, alongside increasing annual turnover and supporting talent locally progress into careers within the sector.  

We want to help locally based Small Medium and Micro Sized Enterprise (SMME) to win more contracts. But they often lack the expertise to navigate convoluted procurement processes on larger contracts. We’re partners in the Building Legacies Project, which has provided business planning advice to more than 800 SMEs over the last couple of years, including helping them overcome barriers to compete for larger opportunities. Led by East London Business Place, the programme also works with developers and contractors in the built environment to promote responsible procurement and help them diversify their supply chains to contract with local SMEs.

For more information see their website https://buildinglegacies.co.uk/.

Case Study: PROMO 2 U…helping businesses make a lasting impression

Waltham Forest based Promo2u provide quality customer service and fast-to-market sustainable solutions for all their clients, regardless of size.

In 2016 Managing Director David Cowell looked at the future growth potential of Promo2u, and realised he needed help to take a more objective view of the business. Bespoke 1-2-1 coaching and mentoring support and a dedicated Business Growth Manager helped David identify Building Legacies as the best fit.

“Building Legacies gives me the confidence to push for growth during uncertain times. Specifically having access to the resources of the Building Legacies team frees up my time to concentrate on planning and most importantly, delivering year on year growth.”

By attending workshops, and a number of successful referrals, Promo2u qualified as a London Living Wage employer and secured significant new sales, including London City Airport and Canary Wharf Group, with whom they recently won a contract to supply biodegradable promotional goods.

Case Study: FLETCHERWILSON…Generating Success Through Customer Focused Film Production

Launched in 2012, FLETCHERWILSON is a film production company located right on the edge of the Olympic Park in Stratford. They specialise in live events and intelligent promotional films for the B2B market. 

When joining the Building Legacies programme in 2016 the Directors realised they were spending too much time working in the business rather than on it. This restricted focus on strategic management was limiting their ability to realise their growth potential.

Through bespoke 1-2-1 coaching and mentoring support from Building Legacies, they have stringently focused on key opportunity and challenge areas, whilst attending the business workshops and networking events they needed to maximise their efforts.

By working with Building Legacies, increasing brand recognition and improving their market position, FLETCHERWILSON are now extremely well positioned for future growth. Not only have they increased sales by £250,000, but also opened a new studio and won several prestigious industry awards.

Read the full case studies  here - https://buildinglegacies.co.uk/case-studies/

The universities and cultural institutions moving to Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park are leaders in their fields. As global beacons for the arts, culture, science and experimentation they’re also helping to drive innovation in the economy locally. We’re working with them to facilitate further collaboration to generate a unique cluster effect that translates into new spin-off businesses and even more research and innovation.

The fashion industry contributes over £1.4 billion annually and 36,000 jobs to east London’s economy, but it faces some big structural challenges. Led by the London College of Fashion, and other partners like the British Fashion Council, local businesses and other institutions, we’re working to identify the key opportunities and barriers to growth for the industry. This includes leading a skills development project that will train local people in cutting-edge fashion skills, unlocking more affordable space for fashion and creative businesses, and directly investing in innovative business practices through open innovation competitions. https://www.fashion-district.co.uk/

Echo++ is a business accelerator programme aimed at small businesses - but built on the principle of sharing knowledge. Participants pay for the programme with a time-based currency called Echo, rather than money. One Echo is worth one hour.

Backed by LLDC, the Echo++ programme has reached out to more than 170 local businesses across a range of sectors.

“It was a bit like Dragons Den, but not as scary,” says Nadia. “Going into Echo I wasn’t too confident about presenting my idea and pitching. But they gave helpful criticism and feedback to help push us forward. They seemed to really buy into the idea of our business and everything behind it. This has all really helped me build my confidence and take our presentation up that extra notch.

“We want to pitch to big companies like Nike and Adidas and collaborate with them to create collections that work with clothes or shoes.”

Echo++ programme lead Nneka Chukwurah explains that “The courses allow people to take a step back from running their business and think about different components like business modelling, marketing and managing finances. I try to make sure there’s a good mix of businesses to create opportunities for skill and knowledge sharing. 

“I do a lot of matchmaking between alumni from different cohorts and regularly check in to see where people are with their business,” says Nneka. Building these close relationships helps her to understand what motivates people so she can provide really bespoke, one-to-one advice to help them be successful. “I also give them suggestions for how they might pay Echos back.