Interview: Business Gateway boss Hugh Lightbody on the importance of forthcoming Small Business Saturday

Hugh Lightbody, the latter’s chief officer, says: “It is important we take opportunities such as Small Business Saturday to highlight accomplishments, remind the sector of its resilience, and encourage consumers to ‘shop local’.”

He also praises the day taking place, “just at that point in time when people are thinking, what do I want to buy, what do I need to buy, as we roll into the festive season,” says Lightbody. “It’s a really great way of getting more of a focus on small businesses... they are vitally important,” he adds, noting that such organisations are collectively worth around £110 billion to the Scottish economy, and make up more than 98 per cent of the private sector, as per the latest data from the Scottish Government. “Let’s celebrate those businesses – they are important to our local community.”

Small Business Saturday UK says it has to date engaged millions of consumers and seen billions of pounds spent – ringing up an estimated £774 million in 2022 alone, according to data commissioned by American Express, the principal supporter of the campaign. And organisers want all kinds of small businesses to get involved, including family businesses, local shops, online businesses, wholesalers, business services, and small manufacturers.

Lightbody also notes that Small Business Saturday comes at a tough time for firms, who have had to contend with a smorgasbord of obstacles including Brexit, the pandemic, inflation, tanking financial markets, and the cost of living crisis, for example, with Scottish firms also giving a mixed reception to the UK Government’s recent Autumn Statement.

Adding the gloomy picture is a recent survey of Scotland’s private sector finding that it showed “further weakness” at the start of the final quarter of the year, while Scottish retail sales fell again last month.

Small Business Saturday UK found that 35 per cent of business-owners think running a company has become harder in the last year, for example. However, on a more positive note, nearly two thirds said they are defying the odds to forecast a better fourth-quarter performance than in the last two years, while 70 per cent believe the challenges of the past three years have made them more resilient leaders.

And resilience is a quality Lightbody sees as hugely important, and a quality he sees as key for Business Gateway to foster. The organisation, Scotland’s national business advisory service, which is delivered by local government, says it has this year received more than 25,000 enquiries (“that interest is there, which is really positive,” says its chief officer), and provided more than 1,4000 events and workshops that have been attended by in excess of 21,000 entrepreneurs, start-up operators, and business owners.

Lightbody says its remit spans Scotland, “from Stranraer, up to Stornoway, and over to Selkirk”, and is in every sector. Among the wide spectrum of ambitious firms to have received its help are Dundee printing specialist Winter & Simpson; Port Glasgow’s Tongue in Peat that is described as the world’s first peat-smoked tomato juice; and Heating, Plumbing & Parts, which has branches in Loanhead, Falkirk, Rosyth and Macmerry, and is now on track to turn over £7m this year after receiving Business Gateway support including HR, strategy, and digital advice.

And Lightbody adds that typically, about 50 per cent of Business Gateway’s start-ups are female entrepreneurs, and 7 per cent are from an ethnic minority, ahead of comprising 4 per cent of the population. And age is no limit to entrepreneurship, with the development agency boss telling how colleagues were at an event a few months ago attended by a 14-year-old who had started his own business. “We want to see more of that coming through. We want to see more of that drive, that ambition, that potential. Building that culture of enterprise is still really important, because it's not as strong as it needs to be.”

He says the public sector looks set to be squeezed further, while funding remains a major challenge for firms – “the appetite for investment in businesses in Scotland is not as strong as it needs to be” – although he welcomes initiatives such as the British Business Bank’s £150m Investment Fund for Scotland that launched last month.

Over the next year, Lightbody aims to see Business Gateway continue to make a contribution to Scotland’s National Strategy for Economic Transformation, which looks to help more businesses to start up, and help more businesses full stop. He would also love to see investment in Business Gateway itself, enabling it to do “more of what we are doing” and hit the objectives of the National Strategy “by getting more start-ups, more businesses supported, more ambition, more potential”. He adds: “A year from now, I'd like to see us [have] more resources in place, more businesses supported, and more opportunity to celebrate an even better Small Business Saturday.”

And in the interim, he sees evidence of Business Gateway-backed firms flourishing. “That's part of the joy of doing the job that I do, that all the guys and girls across the network do. It's seeing those businesses realise their dreams, realise their ambitions, but importantly, by employing people, they are making such a contribution to the Scottish economy as well – so it's really fantastic to see it happening.”