With the number of companies going bust in England and Wales this year on track to be the highest since the financial crisis in 2009, are entrepreneurs prepared to deal with the fallout from failure?
One pair of entrepreneurs happy to open up about their business failure so that others can learn from their mistakes is the husband-and-wife team behind eco-friendly retailer Non Plastic Beach, which folded this summer.Gareth had 20 years' experience working in PR for the automotive industry. Nicola is a qualified chartered accountant, teaching it on a freelance basis. But like many, they harboured an idea for a dream business. And they believed their skills could complement each other.
An early success was providing Etihad Airways with a consignment of toothpaste tablets for their first plastic-free flight.The point when they first realised the business might fold, says Gareth, came with the mini-budget of September 2022. "In the final quarter of 2019, 25% of our business was with the EU. After , that fell off a cliff to 0.5% and never recovered."
He was too reliant on Facebook marketing and too slow to react when that ceased to be so effective, he says.on its iPhones in 2021, so Facebook couldn't automatically track which sites users were visiting to build an accurate profile of customer habits. He also wishes he had gone to more trade fairs sooner as you can negotiate better margins with retailers, which could have helped the business grow.Gareth realised that trade shows were a good place to drum up sales at scale