Member Article

Gold Awards at Bronze Age Museum Inspires Businesswomen

A venerable group of North East business women are looking forward to their annual open day and inaugural awards celebration in the unusual setting of a medieval museum.

The Inspire Network is a group of women entrepreneurs who have offered each other mutual support and business advice to help grow their respective businesses. With a strong emphasis on supporting family businesses and busy working women, meetings are planned with child care provision in mind and are usually arranged to fit in with school hours. The group hosts free meetings all across the region from Choppington in the North to Stockton in the South.

This year, their annual open day will be held on October 3rdat Jarrow’s medieval museum, Bede’s World where more than 30 small businesses will exhibit their goods and services and organisers are hoping to double last year’s attendance from 125 to 250 visitors. The drop in event will include a free advice zone where experts will be on hand to help with matters such as finance and websites and a child friendly zone with entertainment to occupy tomorrow’s entrepreneurs. There will also be a presentation on the effective use of social media.

One of the organisers, Lisa Smith from South Shields who runs Fruit to Suit believes that this year’s event will inspire even more people to develop their entrepreneurial flair thanks to the introduction of the Inspire Awards.

“The awards have been designed to reflect our member’s occupations so we have categories including the best business in retail / online, B2B,B2C and best product. We’re very excited to have a category for the best overall business and the businesswoman of the year too,” she said. “This promises to be the best event we’ve put on to date. With lots of business related activities, fantastic children’s activities and free admission to the museum it will be a great way to spend a morning with the added bonus of networking with other like-minded businesses.”

The Inspire Network Open Day and Annual Awards will be at Bede’s World, Jarrow from 10am to 1pm on October 3rd.

Free tickets are available from www.theinspirenetwork.co.uk

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Keith Newman .