Sing Along Revision - The Break Even Song
I was recently looking for some resources on You Tube to help me introduce my Year 10s to the concept of break even. However, all my initial searches returned were clips featuring the song Break Even by The Script. This gave me a bit of an idea…..
read more...»Cut price cup cake deal goes wrong…...
This is classic business studies news article, packed full with learning for students!
‘Need a Cake’ is a small business in Reading owned by Rachel Brown, who has been in the baking business for 25 years and simply loves making and decorating cakes. Her website says “I can never remember a time, even as a child, when I did not enjoy creating innovative cakes.” The business employs eight people, and normal production is around 100 cakes a month. Mrs Brown thought she would like to try expanding a little, and decided to offer online vouchers for a discount deal in order to drum up some new customers - with disastrous results.
read more...»Business studies lessons from Britain’s best pub
Step aside Heston Blumenthal and his pub (The Hinds Head in Bray). The couple who have invested their heart and soul into a pub near Hull have awarded the Michelin Guide’s coveted pub of the year award.
This article in the Telegraph takes us behind the scenes at The Pipe and Glass Inn in South Dalton, and there are some useful lessons for business students to pick up from the success of James and Kate Mackenzie. I jotted down the following (I’m sure your students will pick up some better points):
read more...»The Bottom Line on Startups and Mistakes
This is 30 minutes of business studies gold dust. Evan Davis brings together three superb speakers for this edition of The Bottom Line to discuss the nature of startups in the UK and also the related topic of innovation and adaptability. Some terrific insights here for all A* students and I would highly recommend that you download the podcast for your own enjoyment too.
read more...»EntrepreneursLIVE! 2011 - Speaker Line-Up
[updated 17 October 2011]
News of the confirmed speakers for our popular EntrepreneursLIVE! 2011 events taking place in London (14 Nov), Birmingham (15 Nov) and Manchester (16 Nov). We will update this blog entry with the final confirmed speakers once they have cleared their diaries for the day!
Don’t forget that students attending EntrepreneursLIVE! 2011 can also enter the Breakfast Enterprise Challenge on the day. Details here
read more...»Problem for Pupil - PEST Solution
Entrepreneurs are risk takers, they spot gaps in a market where customers’ needs are left unfulfilled. They have to balance cash flow management against overstocking, anticipate the likely responses of intelligent rivals and the capricious behaviour of external regulators or governments.
read more...»Applying for a Franchise
Writing a good assignment or homework is not an easy task. Text books rarely offer anything that is challenging or interesting enough. I am extremely grateful to Jon Mace’s recent blog on Jaguar Land Rover which I used as homework for my Year 12 pupils. The articles were great and all the pupils produced some of their best work so far. I have been teaching Franchising recently and in an attempt to avoid a standard discussion of the advantages and disadvantages to the Franchisee and Franchisor (yawn!) I came up with the attached assignment.
read more...»The most popular Business Studies blog entries in September 2011
With over 4,500 business studies blog entries now available, there is a long tail of content for blog readers. However, the following were the top 20 blog entries in September 2011 based purely on page views.
Have a browse to see if there is something you missed…
read more...»Profits dive and put pressure on liquidity - the Distress Monitor
This is a fantastic resource for colleagues who want to encourage their AS/A2 students to get to grips with some real-life business data and issues.
The Baker Tilly SME Distress Monitor is the resource. I liken it to one of those life support machines you see bleeping away on Casualty or Holby City. Except that the monitor is wired up to hundreds of living, breathing medium-sized businesses in the UK.
The monitor covers the financial performance of businesses with annual turnover of between £5m-£25m.
So how is the financial health of this crucial sector? Print this one-page report out for students and ask them to analyse the data, picking out the key features.
You ought to be given some fairly substantial points from the students who read the page carefully. There will be plenty of scope for follow-up questions and discussion.
For example:
- A high proportion (25%) of businesses suffered a drop of more than a half in their profit before tax
- Significant reduction in firm profitability has implications for their finance (retained profit as the most important source of finance)
- One in every four UK SMEs has a current ratio below 1 which indicates insufficient resources to meet their immediate debt repayment
...but, the number of administrations has not risen significantly.
Insights on invention from Trevor Bayliss
A few years ago on my PGCE year we attended some sort of conference. Most of the content has long since disappeared from my memory, but the keynote address was given by Trevor Bayliss, inventor, some time star of The Big Breakfast (remember his Inventor’s Corner slot?) and a hugely entertaining and engaging speaker. He is passionate about the need to protect ideas, given his own experiences with the wind-up radio. So, covering protection of business ideas with my Lower 6th Business Studies class I found this gem of a video interview from the superb internet resource Smarta.com
read more...»Revision Presentation - Understanding Customer Needs
A new business needs to have an effective understanding of the needs and wants of customers in its target market segment. This revision presentation outlines the main methods of market research that a startup can use to identify those customer needs.
read more...»Revision Presentation - Risks and Rewards to Enterprise
Entrepreneurs taking calculated risks expect to enjoy suitable rewards for their endeavour. But what are these risks and rewards? And how can an entrepreneur minimise risk? This updated revision presentation provides an overview…
read more...»Revision Presentation - Adding Value
This revision presentation examines the concept of adding value - the ways in which a business can achieve revenues that are higher than the cost of the inputs into the production or operations process.
read more...»Revision Presentation - Enterprise Skills
In this revision presentation, we outline the key skills demonstrated by successful entrepreneurs….
read more...»Revision Presentation - What is a Business?
This revision presentation asks a simple, but fundamental question - what is a business?
read more...»Insights from an Entrepreneur - Lara Morgan (Pacific Direct)
The Virgin Media Pioneers channel looks like it will provide some excellent teaching materials as it grows, and I particularly like this interview with Lara Morgan, the hugely successful founder of Pacific Direct, a manufacturer and supplier of luxury hotel toiletries. Lots of great insights into factors that determine whether a startup will be successful in an interview conducted by the excellent David McQueen…
read more...»Adding value - turning waste into gold
Good quality potatoes make great potato chips or crisps. But what do you with the smaller or mis-shapen potatoes which fail the raw material quality test for a premium crisp brand? Simple, you use them to create a premium brand of vodka…
read more...»Tim Harford on why it its good for new businesses to fail
Tim Harford, a regular presenter at tutor2u conferences, talks in this interview about several topics relevant to business students and teachers. One key question is whether governments can do more to support entrepreneurs? What do new businesses need from government support and why do so many feel that they don’t get it? Harford is somewhat sceptical that government has much of a role to play in encouraging enterprise, save for reducing “red tape” (legislation and other bureaucracy which gets in the way of running a business) and helping new businesses access fair finance.
Tim’s new book Adapt (highly recommended for summer reading) explores how the critical process of trial and error underpins almost all successful businesses and innovation. He makes a useful evaluative point which top students could bring into their exam answers - that it is good for new businesses to fail. In the US, business failure is almost a badge of honour; but in the UK it is less well received. A dynamic economic based on innovation-led growth should have a healthy flow of new businesses that tried - but failed. The interview is shown below:
read more...»British manufacturer exploiting a niche
A topical story for Wimbledon fortnight - here is Europe’s only remaining manufacturer of tennis balls, doing well by being imaginative about how to develop their competitive advantage. This is a great story for introducing niche markets and specialisation, with a video showing the manufacturing process which includes attaching two figure-eight-shaped pieces of cloth to the rubber balls by hand, not machine, as owner Derek Price insists this is still the most accurate way.
read more...»The Chocolate Business Angel’s Views on Entrepreneurs
A useful profile here of a business angel. Will Kendall was the entrepreneur behind niche organic chocolate brand Green & Blacks which he sold to Cadbury plc for around £20 million back in 2005. Now Will is a business angel, investing in a series of businesses which fit his expertise and which he believes have sufficient growth potential.
Will makes some interesting comments about entrepreneurs. For example, his view is that too many entrepreneurs stifle innovation. How? By getting too involved in day-to-day decision-making. Kendall believes that the best way for a small business or start-up to innovate is to empower staff (nice link between motivation and competitive advantage).
Kendall also suggests that too many small businesses focus on keeping people costs low at the start-up stage, resulting in inexperienced teams. That’s a good point for students to remember - that a strategy of cost minimisation can have downsides for a business, particularly if it damages the process of new product development.
Kendall is clearly not a fan of start-ups which literally try to establish themselves on a shoe-string! How much does Kendall invest as a business angel? The interview suggests the typical investment is £100,000, and he adds value by working much more closely with management teams than traditional equity investors.
Strategy Video - Innovation through technology at Fern Howard
A fantastic video here for A level business students - packed full with relevant concepts. You’ll want to use this again and again.
read more...»Export or Not? Cheesemaker in a Pickle
A year or so old, but still useful nonetheless. I came across this neat case study whilst reading through our OCR Unit 293 GCSE Business Studies toolkit for 2011, and the article is perfect for that exam!
Shepherds Purse Cheeses is a niche food producer that was set up as a classic diversification strategy by a Yorkshire farm and it has clearly been a success, with the product range of cheese being expanded. The owners face a challenge though. The business has become quite reliant on sales of cheese to the major supermarket retailers and is tempted to expand into the (potentially) more lucrative US market. That poses significant logistical issues for a product with a relatively short shelf-life. Should they go ahead? The business owners explain the potential opportunity and difficulties, before getting some interesting advice from the business advisers reading the case. Excellent evaluative comments that students can learn much from…
Cash flow and trade credit - putting the squeeze on suppliers
An interesting article here in the Telegraph which highlights the problem of late-payment of supplier invoices as firms look to find ways of improving their cash flows. Businesses of all types use trade credit as a key source of short-term finance - it is perfectly acceptable and a normal part of doing business. What is less acceptable (from an ethical point of view) is deliberately stretching the time taken to settle amounts owed to suppliers, often well beyond the agreed date.
The article explains that, based on the three months to December 2010:
“Large companies turned the screws on suppliers, paying their bills 36.7 days later than agreed terms, up from 35.9 days in the final quarter last year. But small companies recorded the largest increase in their late payments, taking on average more than 22 days to settle invoices – three days longer than the same period last year.”
Why are firms taking longer to pay? A good question for students, who ought to be able to identify some advantages and disadvantages of extending trade credit beyond agreed contractual terms. Is the increase a sing of worsening cash flow problems? Are suppliers not chasing hard enough for payment? Was it the disruption caused by the snow? Many firms may have tried it on by explaining that they had “sent the cheque” but that it was “stuck in the post & snow”.
From crisps to vodka - a profile of a down-to-earth entrepreneur
Will Chase is the entrepreneur behind Tyrrell’s, the potato chip premium brand which he sold to venture capitalists in 2008 for £30m. Now Will Chase has turned his attention to producing premium vodka - and with great success. He really has turned into a serial entrepreneur.
The Independent has this excellent profile of Will Chase. It describes the production process of Chase vodka and outlines the impressive growth in sales revenue.
I love Chase’s approach to business planning. Speaking of the benefits of staying in control of a smaller, private business, Chase explains that allows him great freedom to experiment and innovate. A classic line with a huge dollop of truth follows;
“That’s what you can do with a small business – there’s no need for a boring strategic plan, we can go where the market takes us.”
So true…
Small firms are embracing exporting - but still put off by “red tape”
Growth strategies involving international expansion are widely covered in the existing business studies specifications, albeit the textbooks often assume that international expansion is mainly the preserve of larger businesses. So a new report from the Federation of Small Businesses on export activities in the SME sector provides an encouraging insight into how international markets can benefit small firms.
read more...»Can this start-up win with pay-as-you train gym membership?
At our recent AQA BUSS1 revision workshops we had a session looking at the viability of the business concept behind The Gym - a growing chain of low-cost, no frills fitness clubs. According to this article on BBC Scotland it looks like the health club market is set for further challenges from new entrants.
one of the new entrants to the market is payasUgym. The payasUgym programme is due to launch at the start of 2011 and will let customers visit a network of clubs without having to pay membership fees. Gym-goers will “load” cash onto an online account which can then be used at various fitness centres. The easyJet entrepreneur Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou is also said to planning to launch a budget fitness club in 2011 with monthly-only contracts costing as little as £15-a-month.
The payasUgym concept is an interesting one in that it utilises the existing capacity of the UK health club sector. The business is avoiding the need to raise the significant capital required to build health clubs. It is simply acting as a marketing channel for existing clubs. How sustainable is that business model? if a customer finds and uses a local gym that he/she really likes, what is to stop that gym from trying to recruit the member away from the payasUgym organisation? Students ought to be be able to identify other potential upsides and issues with this business model. A good one to analyse!
Celebrating the Everyday Entrepreneurs
I’m increasingly drawn to Robert Craven’s excellent writing on entrepreneurship. In this blog entry he quite rightly highlights the role of the entrepreneurs we hear little about - what he calls the Everyday Entrepreneurs.
I like this description, and also the use of the 10,000 hour rule. I first came across this rule when chatting to a tennis coach. His view was that a young tennis player needs to hit a particular shot correctly at least 10,000 times before it enters the brain’s muscle memory and he/she can play it from instinct. The same concept is applied to entrepreneurs. You need to invest at least 10,000 hours in a new business venture to give it a decent chance of success. That’s about 3-5 years, assuming that an entrepreneur works the 75-80 hour weeks that are common for someone starting a business.
I like these two quotes from Robert Craven which sum things up nicely:
“Most people are not “geniuses” who have one great idea. They are born and brought up in a certain way, and then they work really hard to create new opportunities for themselves.”, and
“For every one Branson, there are (tens of) thousands of bright, knowledgeable, hard working, hard pressed people running their own businesses the best they can – and making a pretty damn good job of it.”
Britain’s changing High Street - Poundland, nail bars and empty shops
This report on the BBC website highlights the shift, in times of austerity, away from browsing the High Street for luxuries towards browsing the web for bargains - one result is that on average 14% of shops in the UK are vacant, a massive increase from 10.5% a year ago. But, as ever, the answer to ‘Is the British high street a good location for retail businesses?’ is “It depends….”
read more...»Video case study - enterprise at the sharp end
Market trading. You’ve seen it on various tasks on The Apprentice. And the value of sales at the UK’s 1,000+ outdoor markets is estimated at over £3.6bn. So perhaps it is not surprise that increasing numbers of people are looking to make their first step into enterprise by setting up a stall in a local market. The problem is that running a viable market stall is no easy task. The typical customer at a local market is feeling the pinch and you also need to develop some sharp entrepreneurial skills to make the stall a success.
This excellent three minute video from Jenny Hill of BBC Breakfast takes us behind the scenes at a market in the Midlands to meet some of the experienced traders. Can a new training scheme help budding entrepreneurs make their fledgling businesses a success?
Effective staff training - a cracking example
Retail businesses have to keep up with new laws that affect sales of goods to customers, particularly when there are regulations about the minimum age of customers who are allowed to buy certain goods. Thus, as every teenager is well aware, ID is needed to buy many goods, from cigarettes and alcohol to knives and fireworks. Sales of both indoor and outdoor fireworks to under-16’s are now banned, following the Pyrotechnics Articles (Safety) Regulations introduced this year which reinforced laws banning the sale of explosive items to children. As a result, retailers will have had to ensure that their staff were fully aware of the regulations, and what to do in the event that a customer who appears too young, tries to buy those goods that are included in the ban.
read more...»
