GEW: Thursday

I want to start today with a big thank you to my employers, Esteem (@TheExchangeHull) They have been really supportive through my quest to establish my own business and as much as I have been working on Ginger Sky in my spare time, being with Esteem it has given me a great contact network within the business community of Hull.

While setting up the company I’ve been working full time, putting less pressure on Ginger Sky finances but putting more pressure on my time and resources. This has created challenges, such as finding storage facilities. I required one which would be able to take deliveries for me whilst I am at work and that I could access out of hours, especially when I start trading. Another challenge this has created is how I’m going to handle customer contact in the early days of the business.

Today I have been doing further research on a solution to this challenge and the best option I have found is to use a Virtual Office facility. There are loads of these around offering professional services for small businesses, especially those without their own office facility. They are a great cost effective way of handling mail, email and telephone calls when you’re not available and helping you keep in touch with your customers when you might otherwise not be able to.

For the last official day of Global Entrepreneurship Week 2012 Ginger Sky has teamed up with another local business and at 1pm I’ll be posting an interview I conducted earlier in the week with the owners of Owl & Pussycat Creative. They are a small business operating out of Hull who have started trading and are in the process of growing as a business. The interview will offer an alternative insight into the story of setting up a business, the inspirations behind doing it and a couple of tips if you’re thinking of doing it yourself. Be sure to check it out here tomorrow.