Let’s Do Business Finance announces the shortlist for ‘Best New Business’ at the upcoming Dynamic Business Awards
After receiving a fantastic range of great entries, Let’s Do Business Finance have decided on the shortlisted businesses to win the ‘Best New Business’ award at the upcoming female focused Dynamic Business Awards 2023.
In March 2023, Let’s Do Business Finance announced that they are proud to be sponsoring the ‘Best New Business’ award at the second Dynamic Business Awards – an annual awards ceremony hosted by Platinum Media Group. Hosted by Platinum Media Group the Dynamic Business Awards was created to bring together and celebrate the achievements of business women across a wide range of sectors in Sussex and Surrey, and includes several categories to recognise the diverse accomplishments of women in business in the South East.
The ’Best New Business’ category, sponsored by not-for-private profit company Let’s Do Business Finance, is an award dedicated to recognising a businesswoman with entrepreneurial aptitude, vision and drive that has built a successful business from start-up in recent years. These businesses are ‘ones to watch’ and are expected to achieve great things, making a real difference to their sector in the future.
The team at Let’s Do Business Finance received a fantastic selection of applications for the award to assess and interview. In the last several years many innovative and exciting businesses have emerged despite the COVID19 pandemic and economic difficulty, which made the achievements and accolades of the entrants an even tougher decision, but Let’s Do Business have narrowed the selection down to five entrants to make it through to the next stage.
“It has been fantastic to read the stories of so many inspiring female led businesses in Sussex and Surrey, and we were delighted to receive so many entrants for ‘Best New Business’. Our 5 shortlisted businesses have all shown passion, tenacity and a desire to really make a difference in their fields, and choosing a winner will be a hard task!”
— Stacey Pretty, Marketing Director of Let’s Do Business Group
See more below for information on each finalist that made it through to the shortlist!
Carver Coaching – Lisa Carver
Established in 2020, Carver Coaching, based in Surrey, designs and delivers bespoke coaching programmes to support leaders and their teams, to help businesses be the best they can be. Led and founded by Lisa Carver, a leadership coach, the skillset of Carver Coaching to assist businesses is truly wide spanning – from leadership and re-integration, to conflict resolution and career development.
“Just like serious athletes work with a coach to achieve their best performance, we will help the client be the very best version of themselves as a leader, corporate executive, and as a whole person. We offer bespoke, confidential, non-judgemental and personalised support that will enable the executive to achieve and thrive.” – Carver Coaching
Wildling Drinks - Roisin Meredith
Wildling Drinks, founded by Roisin Meredith and based in Shoreham, West Sussex, ferments, flavours and bottles water kefir, and supplies its drinks to shops, cafes and festivals across Sussex as well as selling online. Roisin became passionate about probiotics after her daughter became seriously ill with a gut problem and began fermenting to create natural probiotics. After quickly becoming popular with her family, Wildling Drinks took off. As well as aiming to provide a natural and healthy alternative for gut health, Wildling Drinks sets itself apart by adopting ethical and circular economy principles to their business model. By using her own passion and learned knowledge of the product, Roisin built and scaled the business from starting in 2021 and is only continuing to grow!
“My ability to adopt ethical and circular economy principles is what sets me apart from other enterprises. As a neurodivergent entrepreneur, I value collaboration over competition and working with nature’s cycles to produce simple, quality produce. I develop environments that are supportive, nurturing, and creative as part of my vision of sustainable business.” – Roisin Meredith, Wildling Drinks
South East Angels – Kristina Pereckaite
Founded in Brighton in 2020, South East Angels is an angel group of investors that provides vital funding to early stage start ups to get them off the ground. Their mission is to build the most active and involved community of angel investors in the South East of England – challenging the status quo of traditional angel investor groups by creating an engaging, fruitful and meaningful experience for their investor members, as well as the small businesses they work with.
In a few short years, South East Angels has gained 26 investors as members, and a wider network of 100+ investors – some members being successful entrepreneurs from the City who want to see small and budding businesses succeed. Big goals for the future, South East Angels aims to continue to expanding its reach to help more small businesses secure investment, and even help more women become angel investors through their Future Angels programme.
“We have quickly become known as the emerging angel group in the South East and are the most active business angel investors in Brighton, having invested £1M in startups since forming.” – Kristina Pereckaite, South East Angels
Pittingale & Daughter Foods Ltd – Francesca Pittingale
Established in March 2022 in Crawley Down, West Sussex, Pittingale & Daughter Foods provides an accessible consultancy and retail opportunity service for small food and drink businesses – advocating for these businesses to get their products out there and to grow.
Founder of the company, Francesca Pittingale, after spending 14 years in the food industry, wanted to turn her passion towards helping small to medium food and drink suppliers to sustainably scaling their businesses. Recognising the challenges that can come with launching and growing a business in this economy, Francesca created her consultancy business and subsequently SUP Foods – offering these businesses the opportunity to benefit from expert advice and knowledge, and a retail opportunity to get their products into the market.
Pittingale & Daughter Foods prides itself on its experience in helping local small businesses to grow their food or drinks companies, and how in a few short years it has gained a real trust from its clients. Francesca aims to increase the number of successful start ups in the industry in the next few years through Pittingale & Daughter Foods, by expanding the reach and providing accessible resources for more and more small business owners as the business grows.
“Almost 60% of start-ups in the UK fail within the first 3 years of trading* and I believe that some of those can be avoided if there were more accessible resources for these businesses. Over the next 12 months, we have ambitious plans to expand our retail arm (SUP Foods).” – Francesca Pittingale, Pittingale & Daughter Foods Ltd
Collage Recruitment – Tracy Kriel
Incorporated in May 2021, Collage Recruitment from Haslemere, Surrey, is a consultative, service orientated recruitment specialist. Offering a full spectrum of services throughout the recruitment process, Collage Recruitment supports both employers and candidates to find the best fit so that the workforce can thrive.
As founder and director of the company, Tracy Kriel manages the strategic direction and operations of the business to ensure it sticks to its core values of promoting diversity and supporting ambitions. Working across a range of industries from Dental to Tech, Collage has successfully placed numerous candidates into roles to help to further develop businesses.
“For me, it's more than helping people find jobs. It's about helping people find their happy place. I want our candidates to thrive, and our goal is to support their ambitions. We champion our candidates. We consider them to be just as important as our clients. Our after-care service is of utmost importance and something we are regularly thanked for.” – Tracey Kriel, Collage Recruitment
What’s next?
The winner of the Best New Business award will be picked based on recommendations from Let’s Do Business Finance and the panel of the Dynamic Business Awards, with the winner receiving their award at the Dynamic Business Awards ceremony at The Grand Hotel in Brighton on Thursday 25th May 2023.
