Matthew Rusk Student Entrepreneur in Residence

Tweekey Bags is a project that was started by Ben Ivey at the University of Exeter to fill a niche gap in the student’s sports stash marketplace. Ben identified that there was an underlying demand for university branded sports bags throughout sports societies, something that was going unfulfilled. Yet, due to the nature of the product – a university branded accessory – Ben faced a challenging process being able to gain the rights to use the university logo on his product. Though his passion, enthusiasm and pitching ability he was able to convince the university to allow him to do so – the fist student of my knowledge to be awarded the right – enabling him to create his business product.

He then rapidly developed a prototype product, utilising his Chinese language skills (developed thanks to a study abroad module on his course) to source a supplier. He then started building contacts and selling into the multiple sports clubs that Exeter has to offer in 2013 – something that went extremely well, seeing his product stocked in the uni shop as well as helping him win a Innovation Centre start up investment.

Ben Ivey – Elite Sports Bags

2014 saw Tweekey develop further as a company, expanding into six different universities across the UK (Kent, Surrey, Bristol, Aberdeen, Dundee & Liverpool) alongside the University of Exeter. This has helped Ben sell over 400 bags this academic year – a fantastic achievement considering the challenges that are incorporated when trying to use someone else’s logo on your products! However, Ben is clear about why his business has been successful (i) it is a quality product that he is proud of (ii) the product generates money for the clubs as well as the universities every time that it is sold. Therefore, it is in their interest to help promote and sell his products – a great business model that might mean he slightly reduces his margin per product but dramatically increases the number of potential sales. I will keep you up to date with how Tweekey develops over the next few months right her on the blog – you can also check out the Tweekey Bags website directly.

When we spoke Ben was also keen to talk about some of the fantastic events he has been to over the last few months that have helped him develop as an entrepreneur. This included the Start Up Bus competition that saw six buses from across Europe bring some of the brightest young entrepreneurs together for a conference in Vienna. Along the way the entrepreneurs were tasked with creating new business ideas that they would pitch once they had arrived. Ben described this as a world-wind of experience, with his team coming third in the European competition gaining them an invitation to Silicon Valley later in the year.

Ben also suggested attending the Power To Achieve, Millionaire Mind Intensive and Unleash The Power Within conferences that aim to built upon core skills as an entrepreneur. The first of these, the Power To Achieve conference, covers a wide range of different areas of interest before focusing specifically on the limiting beliefs that hold you back in business. The second, the Millionaire Mind Intensive, explores how to manage your money – splitting it into “pots” that ensure that you have the right portfolio balance. The final conference ran by Tony Robins, a well known motivational speaker, looks at the psychology of being successful. I was really pleased to hear about Ben’s suggestions of worthwhile events to go to in the UK – indeed, self development is one of the most important aspects of being an entrepreneur so do check out some of these events in case they are of interest for you!

On a business from this week I had the exciting experience of launching the first international website – Singing Lessons Dublin in Ireland. With Ireland being a country boasting some of the worlds best musicians (U2, Sinéad O’Connor, Thin Lizzy) it was a really significant moment for myself not least as I am half Irish. Indeed, this is a big step for the business as we explore entering the music tuition markets in countries outside of the UK – I will keep you updated on how successful it is, at the moment I have no idea how it will develop! On the home front the business continues to expand taking on teachers for the Guitar Lessons Derby and Singing Lessons Portsmouth websites. If you have any questions about the conferences mentioned in this blog article don’t hesitate to get in touch .

Posted under Clothing Companies, Progress Update, Tweekey

Here it is, a progress update on my “eCommerce Website on a Shoe String” project. Just to recap, the motivation for this project came from observing many students at the university who were trying to set up retail businesses, with a substantial amount of their initial capitol been put into the creation on a eCommerce website – we are talking hundreds of pounds here, often thousands. We would be approached often at the Innovation Centre by clothing businesses, who claimed “we have a great product and a fantastic business model but we just need £1,000+ to build our website to market our product from – will you fund it?”. The answer was inevitably no.

Why? At the genesis of every business capital is tight; therefore an entrepreneurs ability to utilise this capital to its maximum effect on the business’s development is a sign of whether that business is going to be successful. The balance sheet of these students would often see hundreds of pounds spent on product development, tens of pounds on market research yet they wanted to spend thousands of pounds on a website! In some cases that is over 50% of a students entire investment into their business would be on their website, for the majority of retail businesses created at university this is an unnecessary and costly mistake. No imagine if 45% of that budget could be reallocated to (i) further product development (ii) additional market research – with the website/online sales platform accounting only for 5-10% of the businesses start up costs. Therefore, my challenge here is to create a eCommerce website on a shoe string budget – that is to make a fully functioning eCommerce website for just £75!

My last post on the project (20th April – Progress Update: CampusBoard) had seen me select name and product for my fictional eCommerce business – Mulberry Silk Pillowcase – then purchase the domain name (www.mulberrysilkpillocase.com) from a domain registers for £11.99. Then I moved to buy hosting for £2.49 per month – giving the start up costs so far as £14.48. The final step in my last update was to install WordPress, which is free, using their “Famous 5 Minute Install” – setting up a basic home page, with a little bit of content on it about my business.

Today we are going to look at how I developed this basic and standard WordPress theme into a fully functioning eCommerce website. The next step was to spend a little bit more of my £75.00 budget on purchasing a predesigned, WooCommerce compatible, WordPress theme. As mentioned before in this blog there are many free themes on WordPress that can be utilised to create your store, however, I think the price is reflected in the quality of the website designs and often customers can identify these websites as a WordPress template rather than your own store. This is a shame as for £30 – £50 you can get some outstanding templates that will look completely professional and standalone from the WordPress backend. After spending a good deal of time searching through different WordPress themes, all of which can be done by searching on Google, I decided that the Munditia Premium Coding Theme would most aptly reflect the general feel of the business. The cost price of this WooCommerce integrated theme was $60.00 or £36.89 – giving the total price spent on creating my eCommerce website as £51.37.

The process itself of purchasing a new theme and then uploading it to WordPress is quite simple. Firstly, pay for and download the theme of your choice onto your laptop then upload that to the WordPress Themes in your admin panel. You will then be able to select that theme as your theme of choice for your website. However, that really is the start of the process. Next, you will need to integrate all the compatible Plugins that the purchased theme specifies as necessary – primarily these Plugins will include WooCommerce, YITH WooCommerce Wishlist, WordPress SEO, Google XML Sitemaps, Contact Form 7, Broken Link Checker as well as others – that will facilitate the functionality of your website.

It is crucial to approach the downloaded theme as a paint-by-numbers canvas for you to build your website upon, so while the major structures of the website (number of partitions, element and widget location, website dynamics etc.) have been fixed for you there is still a great deal that you can edit to your own specifications. You don’t need to have a strong grasp of HTML to be able to achieve this, nor do you need to pay someone else to do it for you – read up, watch Youtube videos and ask for peoples advice in the multiple WordPress forums on the internet. To achieve the feel of the website that I wanted for my fictional product I started altering a number of the aspects of the original website – including changing theme colours from red to pink, altering the widget location and specification, removing aspects of the website I didn’t like (for example a pop up help box).

Of course all the changes thematically that you make on the website are intrinsically tied in to the customer journey that you wish to build for customers. Therefore, ascetic improvements must be in keeping with structural requirements that you have set out. For me, keeping a website simple is the key to success. The header menu denotes this sentiment, simply stating: Home, Shop, Benefits and About Us/Contact – with my customer journey always focused on ensuring that customers engage with shop, while being reassured by (i) the businesses credentials (About Us/Contact) and (ii) the benefit of the product (Home/Benefits).

The content, or copy as it is know, of your website is also an important factor in ensuring that your website and brand aline. You should both mirror your product and play to your target customer. I thought very carefully about the copy I wished to use on the website, knowing from my research that Silk Pillowcases tend to be bought by women as a luxury beauty product rather than an aid to more restful sleep. I hope that by reflecting and understanding the buyers motivation, communicated back to the customer through the content used on the website, will help improve potential sales. Moreover, to help gain these sales in the first place I would strongly suggest that every eCommerce website should run a blog as (i) it keeps your website looking fresh, updating regular clients to new developments (ii) helps increase traffic through the effect of the long search tail (Google it!) and (iii) makes you look like an authority in the field that you are selling within. Fulfilling this on the Silk Pillowcase website is the Silk Pillowcase Blog, in which I have already written three 300 – 800 word, original, quality posts (Types of Silk, Yuki Tsumugi Silk & Mulberry Silk) – that are the optimum types of post that you should be looking to upload.

Now that I have a fully functioning theme, with some good relevant content the next step will be to get the website there on a visual level – ensuring the all the images, page layouts and the dynamics of the website point towards my transaction goal. I would also need to begin to track the engagement new clients have on the website to understand how to continue to develop the website to best suit my target audience. I will explain how to do all of this in my next “eCommerce website on shoestring” post. Here at MGR Music Tuition this week has gone really well, launching Drum Lessons Bristol, Piano Lessons St Albans and Singing Lessons Aberdeen websites. It has been great to continue to expand the business both into new areas, such as St Albans, as well as tripling up in Bristol and Aberdeen with a third instrument on offer.

Posted under Clothing Companies, eCommerce Website On A Shoe String, New Project, SEiR

For the thirteenth in our series of progress updates on University of Exeter students who have started business whist studying at the university I had the pleasure of meeting up with an old friend, Ned Aufenast. Ned is the founder and director of Whike UK, a subsidiary of Whike which is a Dutch company that, with the help of Ned, has designed a sail assisted reclined tricycle that enables it riders to utilise the power of the wind as they cycle.

The story starts with Ned’s A-level project, in which Ned designed his own sail assisted tricycle, prompting him to make contact with the Dutch based Whike company. Impressed by his enthusiasm for the conceptual product, this first contact developed into a long-term business relationship that soon saw Ned become the UK distributer of the first road-legal wind-assited bike in the UK by the age of 18. I would like to add this was all before he started his degree in Mechanical Engineering here at Exeter University.

Whike – an incredibly striking tricycle, that can go up to 40mph!

Once at the University of Exeter Ned continued to grow the Whike brand, exploring the extreme sports, sailing and cycle enthusiast markets and combining this with first class customer service. Indeed, as a business model Whike differs dramatically from 95% of all other businesses that I have encountered during my time as SEiR. Whereas the majority of students I meet look to sell quantity, often at low prices (between £1 – £100), Whikes currently sell at over £2,000 a tricycle for the lower end products right up to £5,000+ for the top of the range models. This gives Ned a very different taste of business life compared to that of other student entrepreneurs, with months at a go passing without a sale before the summer season prompts a dramatic spike in interest. It is a role that therefore requires patients, ensure that marketing is done effectively to maximises the likelihood of these more infrequent sales and additional, more frequent revenue streams are found for the business.

One such additional revenue stream focuses on area that is crucial to business that is based around higher end products – customer service. Obviously in the primary sales stage this goes without saying, but it is the support mechanisms that Ned has put into place to enable Whike’s users to (i) maintenance their tricycles and (ii) form a community around their common interest post-sale that has help push the business forward so rapidly over the last two years. Indeed, it is a product that is so new that ensuring that the “first adopters” of the Whike have flawless experience at all stages of the sales process facilities the further growth of sales. Therefore, I think two key lessons can be learned from Ned’s example and I would be keen to put them to any entrepreneur at the university (i) what is stopping you from creating a business that is created around a higher end or luxury product and (ii) no mater what your business is how can you improve the customer’s experience within the pre & post sale stages.

During his second year studying at the University of Exeter Ned applied for a grant awarded by the Innovation Centre to entrepreneurial students. Pitching for equipment to help enhance Whike’s presence at trade events, as well as his ability to deliver the business critical customer service, he was successful in gaining a Student Start Up Award, provided by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) and Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF). Ned, citing the equipment as “vital”, was pleased to confirm that it has certainly made a difference to his business – facilitating him to deliver products and maintenance nationwide via a grant funded trailer for Whikes, as well as making Whikes presences noticeable at trade events thanks to a grant funded gazebo.

However, Ned was also keen to highlight some of the other non-grant related benefits that the Innovation Centre offers to business minded students. Primarily, Ned’s decision to move his “office” from his bedroom to a hot-desk space within the Innovation Centre enabled him to create a better work-life balance, as well as increasing productivity – something that is available for all entrepreneurially minded students, subject to the approval of the Innovation Centre Directors, for reasonable rates.

After a successful second year at the University of Exeter spring 2014 marked an adventure of a lifetime for Ned, one that would rival any University of Exeter students – seriously if you know any other adventure stories like this please let me know as I would love to write about them! The challenge was to ride a Whike across Atacama Desert in Chile, covering 1,500 miles in 23 days. Ned tackled this alongside Dave Cornthwaite and Jamie Fulbrook, the former being well known adventurer and author who has a passion for raising money along the way. Ned recounted the beauty of the scenery, the nightmare of vital equipment getting lost during air transit before being tracked down at the last minute by Air France (good customer service!), the fact there was barely any wind to push the Whikes along and the overall success of the mission. Most amazingly Ned said that each Whike had recorded climbs and descents during the entire journey that equaled climbing Everest three times!

Whike traveling across the Atacama Desert in Chile!

A down to earth student that is a role model for all entrepreneurs currently studying at the University of Exeter, Ned has an extremely bright future ahead of him & I hope that he will remain deeply involved in helping to develop other entrepreneurs at our university for many years to come.

Here at MGR Music Tuition this week I have been working on launching Singing Lessons Sunderland, doubling up on the number of instruments in the city after the launch of a guitar tuition website in the city during 2013, as well as Singing Lessons Glasgow and Guitar Lessons Colchester websites. In the next week we will be continuing to hire new teachers as well as aiming to bring a few more new websites online as I continue to drive towards my ambition of facilitating quality music lessons, for all abilities, across the UK.

Posted under Progress Update, Whike