The B-Daily Business Network has just reported that commercial behaviour experts are citing UK small businesses as the leading influences of global business trends. This is great news for the UK economy and will provide some much needed encouragement to start-up companies all over the country. Most business owners today know that the internet is the future of a company’s success and so monitoring of online business trends is now just as important as the monitoring of offline developments. Here are some of the top online trends for business over the next year. Because the economy is still in recovery...

It was recently announced that the company Nestle are planning to streamline one of their more prominent coffee factories in a bid to streamline. This comes as no surprise in what is still an economic downturn. With economic conditions still making business success difficult for many, it seems that streamlining is fast becoming a popular choice. This response may seem drastic, however it does not necessarily imply that jobs must be lost in the process; there are plenty of other methods which can help to cut costs during challenging times. One simple way to streamline is to reduce paperwork. Organising...

Controversial confectionery supplier Nestle has announced that Kit Kat bars will be Fairtrade certified from 2010. They have launched a print ad campaign to coincide with the certification, carrying the line ‘Have a break, have a Fairtrade Kit Kat’.   The ad explains Nestle’s on-going sustainability drive, ‘The Cocoa Plan’, through which it promises to invest £65m over the next 10 years to increase agricultural assistance, promote sustainable farming methods and improve social conditions for farmers working in the Ivory Coast.   Funnily enough it doesn’t mention their;...

The economy may well be slimming down, but you may be surprised to learn that people don’t want to cut their gym memberships from their budgets, Forbes magazine tells us. It seems that gyms our one of the ten things that people are still spending money on. Over in the US at least, research from Stifel Nicolaus predicts overall gym memberships will increase by four percent this year.   The days of simple promotional cotton shirts and shorts are coming to an end. Luckily Gift Selection has a range of high end promotional active wear for everyone. Holly Tuten, retail manager for a major Hotel &...

Is your business doing as well as Tesco? Their sales have passed £1bn per week. It seems to be hated by some, but you all keep going – otherwise it wouldn’t keep growing. There are plenty of other places to buy food from, so why go if you dislike it so much? A recent survey by Brand Republic shows that the supermarket is; “valued for its competitive prices and range of products”. Moreover, in ten years it has successfully built up a network of 1,376 stores outside the UK, which last year generated £564 million worth of profit. A few people were opposed to large 24-hour supermarkets like...

The Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) have estimated that around a million home owners are in negative equity due to falling house prices. The research suggests that lowering property values have left 900,000 people with a home which is worth less, then the mortgage repayments by the end of 2008. Experts say that house prices are likely to fall further, but those that will be worst affected will be different to those in the last recession in 1993. Back then it was estimated to have hit 1.5 million homeowners with negative equity. What are we to do about all this negative equity? As I heard one...

 Troubled bank RBS is set to be sending out another 9,000 p45′s, half of them being in Britain. The redundancies will take place mainly in IT, document processing and group manufacturing.The bank has announced 2,700 job losses already in Britain and 15,000 worldwide. Unfortunately RBS aren’t the only bank with employment issues. In recent weeks HSBC has shed between 3,000 and 1,200 members of staff depending on who you ask.   It’s obvious that we are all beginning to face the worst economic climate of a generation. This shouldn’t mean however that the promotions industry...

The Forbes 2009 rich list has shown the world’s richest living person is once again Bill Gates, despite having lost a whopping $18bn. No doubt he’ll be struggling to make ends meet with his measly remaining $40 billion. Do spare a thought for poor Anil Ambani, an Indian businessmen who has heavily invested in telecomes, who last year lost a painful $31.9 billion.   It seems many people are feeling the pinch, closer to home West London’s favourite Russian, Roman Abramovich has winced as his fortune has slid from $23.5 billion to $8.5 billion. Maybe these guys should get some...

Collapsed bank Northern Rock is to rise from the ashes, by offering mortgage to business with up to £14bn in new loans by 2011, Gordon Brown has announced.   The Newcastle-based bank is expected to take on a respectable £5bn in new mortgages this year, rising to a predicted £9bn by 2010. This cash injection will arrive from new deposits, repayments on existing loans and even more government money. Meaning tax payers will be putting their hands in their pockets again. These plans are part of wider move to restructure the nationalised bank, and show a U-turn in the government’s decision to cut...

It seems we are officially in a recession for the first time since 1991, government figures have confirmed. The exact figures show that gross domestic product has fallen by 1.5% in the last three months of 2008 – after a 0.6% drop in the previous quarter. What we are seeing now is classed as a recession – as two consecutive quarters of falling economic growth has been seen. For those of you who like a good statistic it shows the largest quarter-to-quarter fall since 1980, with a 1.8% reduction on the same quarter a year ago. The weakness of the pound is apparent with the sterling...