Design duo get to meet BBC Dragon’s Den hero

HINCKLEY design duo Brio Media met business tycoon and role model Theo Paphitis after they snagged the opportunity to be part of his Small Business Sunday Twitter community.

The pair Alex Russell and Elliott Wynd-Jennings were invited to the exclusive Small Business Sunday (SBS) winners event at the ICC in Birmingham.

It came almost a year on from when Brio Media’s tweet “@TheoPaphitis Howdy, we’re Brio! A small graphic design studio based in Leicestershire. We specialise in design for print and web #SBS” caught the former Dragon’s Den star who then proclaimed them SBS winners that week.

The idea of SBS is to cultivate a community of enthusiastic small-scale entrepreneurs and encourage networking and collaboration.

Any venture which fits the bill can tweet to the businessman between 5pm and 7.30pm on Sunday evenings and he’ll pick six winners who are announced the next day.

Elliott, who along with Alex, founded the forerunner of Brio while still studying at Hinckley College, said: “We were so shocked when we were announced as winners, the SBS community is so well known for encouraging small business and has provided great support to us. The last 11 months have seen our business grow both on social media and in real life.”

At the one day ICC event winners past and present were able to network, get business help from experts and listen to talks by sponsors as well as Theo himself.

The event concluded with a chance to meet Theo one on one.

Alex said: “The event was absolutely fantastic, we came away from the day empowered with information as well as a long list of new contacts. Theo has long been a role model for us and to meet him in person was an honour, he’s got so much passion for small businesses like our own.”

The pair, who work for many local businesses, including Hinckley BID, are keen to help out other local businesses. Contact them on www.briomedia. co.uk to discuss branding, print and web design.