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Growing ambitions: Lucking’s business has trebled in size in the past three years. (Pic: Matt Writtle)

Fourfront's Clive Lucking is in the driving seat when it comes to office interiors

Clive Lucking’s career can be charted through his cars — a Ford Fiesta, a Porsche and a “convertible sports car”. Lucking, chief executive and founder of office interiors firm Fourfront Group, doesn’t want to talk about the last of those, which he currently drives. “We have all these environmental accreditations and it sounds so bad”, he says with a rueful smile.
Picture perfect: Tom Box, left, Oli Hyatt and Adam Shaw, right, were partly inspired by Toy Story — and chose their company name after a boozy student session. (Pic: Glenn Copus)

The trio who got animated about venture into cartoons

Oli Hyatt, Tom Box and Adam Shaw have jobs that most small children would dream of having. The founders of animation company Blue Zoo make TV cartoons for a living. Their hit shows include Alphablocks and Tree Fu Tom for BBC kids’ channel CBeebies and Olive The Ostrich for Nick Jr.
Full of beans: Macatonia, left, and Torz discovered proper coffee in San Francisco (Picture: Matt Writtle)

Forming a union to source coffee that’ll really stimulate

Steven Macatonia, co-founder and roast-master of Union Hand Roasted, sets down two cups of coffee in front of me. One is a natural blend from Ethiopia, the other a washed bean from Costa Rica. “The coffees you have in front of you represent the top 1% of the global harvest,” says Jeremy Torz, Union’s other founder. “It’s the difference between a good bottle of wine and a box of party plonk.”
Dolly mixture: Richard Contreras, left, and Mark Findlay who wants to do up Parton’s theme park (Picture: Daniel Hambury)

Vinyl duo who have put flooring firmly centre stage

Harvey Maria, the Croydon-based vinyl floor maker, is one of a very elite club after successfully selling sand to the Arabs. Founder Mark Findlay, a devotee of Dolly Parton whose dream assignment would be to give her Dollywood theme park in Tennessee a bit of a floor-over, remembers that contract well, because it so nearly didn’t happen.
Full of energy: Spencer-Percival spotted a “recruitment backwater” as he started up his new business

Spencer Ogden is a recruiter rigged up to enjoy the fruits of recession

Spencer-Percival is what you might call a bit of an eccentric. The 42-year old owns a forest, has funded the RAF’s first table tennis academy and has full-size punch bags throughout the offices of his fledgling business — as well as roulette wheels where staff can win random bonuses.
Rebecca Swift: Head of Creative Planning (iStockphoto)
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How SMEs can build and maintain an effective website

We are in a tough economic climate where SMEs need to work effectively to gain the edge over their competitors. With the recent changes in copyright and the proliferation of ‘do it yourself’ website builders, many are left feeling unsure about how to create their own site which will stand out, be effective at securing new business and suit their needs, but also which will be copyright compliant.
Homing in: Judy Niner has built her MondaytoFriday website into a £10 million-turnover business in the last decade (Picture: Daniel Hambury)

How Judy found room in the market for her great idea

Necessity has been described as the mother of invention but it can also be the maker of fortunes. Judy Niner, founder and chief executive of the MondaytoFriday.com rent-a-room website, hit upon her business idea back in the late Nineties when her job as marketing director of the Science Museum in Kensington meant she needed a home from home in the week in London while renting out her place on the same basis in Oxford.
Going with the flow: Ronan McCarthy relocated to the borough and beefed up online presence of his Shoeshine Express (Picture: Daniel Hambury)

Beside the Thames: A hive of entrepreneurial activity

Asked to imagine the heart of David Cameron’s much-touted digital economy, most would be likely to think of Old Street’s Silicon Roundabout, home to a hub of trendy technology and media companies. But away from the hype of east London, more traditional small businesses are embracing the digital economy in some unusual ways, and in an unusual location — Richmond upon Thames.
Forget the Budget: a significant announcement slipped out 24 hours before George Osborne's arrival at the despatch box
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HM Revenue & Customs postpones the introduction of “real time information"

Forget the Budget. The most significant announcement from the Government this week for vast numbers of small businesses was quietly slipped out 24 hours before George Osborne arrived at the Despatch Box. Much to the amazement of many small business advisers, HM Revenue & Customs announced it was postponing the introduction of “real time information” (RTI).
Different perspective: Lilos, left, and Braun specialise in distorted designs (Picture: Matt Writtle)

Arty Globe's designs become all the rage, much to Dragons’ fury

The barest mention of Dragons’ Den sets Isaac Lilos racing up the stairs from the basement office of his shop, Arty Globe, in the corner of Greenwich Market. If customers want to know about the 39-year-old’s experience on the popular television show, he’ll regale them, at length, on just why his pitch flopped.
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How the right non-executive can help improve the way you run your business

Companies listed on the stock market have a legal duty to appoint non-executive directors, but doing so also makes a great deal of sense for many privately-owned businesses. The right non-executive can provide hugely valuable strategic advice, offer operational insights on how to improve the way you run your business, add credibility to your organisation and provide access to a string of useful connections.
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Will the extension of FLS increase the amount of credit extended to SMEs?

Will the Government’s announcement of an extension to the Funding for Lending Scheme (FLS) deliver an increase in the amount of credit extended to small and medium-sized enterprises? It should certainly mean more credit is available – but that doesn’t mean there will be greater demand for loans, or that SMEs previously denied access to borrowing will now find lenders any more accepting.
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Young entrepreneurs are the cornerstone of the country’s economic success

The RSA and Royal Bank of Scotland recently published a report which stated that while 9.5 per cent of 18-24 year olds say they intend to start their own business, only 3.6 per cent of them are doing so. Much work is being done by the government to encourage younger entrepreneurs to start their own business, and inspired by programmes like Dragons Den, the UK start-up landscape is vibrant, despite ongoing economic gloom. However, more young people need to feel inspired and empowered to pursue their own business goals, and education and mentorship play no small part in this process.
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