Member Article

Behind the business with betterlanguages.com

Betterlanguages.com are a translation company who work mainly with UK retailers and food manufacturers, translating multilingual export packaging, marketing materials and websites. To date they have done translations into more than 50 languages using a network of locally based, native speaking experts. CEO Mike Hunter, takes Bdaily behind the business.

What key challenges has your company recently faced?

We’ve been extremely lucky in that we’ve recently seen a surge in growth including a 50% increase in the last 12 months. However, one of the biggest challenges we have faced is ensuring we have the right structures and system in place to guarantee that we can maintain the same level of quality translation whilst servicing more clients in an ever increasing number of languages.

What is your biggest achievement over the past 12 months?

Bucking the economic trend and having an extremely successful year. Strangely enough the worse the
economy has become the better we’ve done as firms seek new, more lucrative markets to target whilst the UK remains sluggish.

What is your biggest focus for the coming year?

It may sound ambitious but we want to double our turnover again this year and hope to break the half a
million pound barrier. It will take a lot of effort but we’re confident that we can do it, particularly with the UK
economy not anticipated to improve any time soon.

We may also look to hire new employees and to expand the range of language translations we offer, if demanded by clients.

If you had to choose one top piece of advice for someone just starting out in business, or is currently operating within your industry sector, what would it be?

Use all the advice and support you can find. With the rise of the internet there is an abundance of information out there to help you, much of which is free.

Also, be sure to learn from other businesses. Try and benchmark areas you like of the successful ones and
learn from the mistakes of the less successful ones. It’s not always about being like competitors, e.g. when we were developing our first website, industry competitors all had quite boring sites, I looked at the Coke website and liked its simplicity and clear message, which is something we’ve tried to emulate.

Can you share with us your view of the current landscape of business, in this region or generally and where your organisation sits within it?

The recession is still here and it’s just an extremely tough time for many firms. Sometimes it can feel like a roller coaster, up one minute, down the next, often both several times on the same day. There is clear structural change going on such as the move to online retail and businesses spreading risk by working in different export markets. Betterlanguages.com is at the forefront of both movements and our projections are that both areas will continue to grow significantly in the foreseeable future.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Mike Hunter .