Blast-off! Our £5m boost for small firms begins today
...and Co-op study finds thriving local businesses make us ALL better off
THE Mail on Sunday is today printing free adverts for 50 small firms in a groundbreaking scheme to boost local communities.
Our £5million giveaway, which will help 1,600 small firms in total, will run every week from today until late September.
The 1,600 firms will also receive free adverts in other titles owned by the Daily Mail & General Trust (DMGT) group, including the Daily Mail, Metro, the i and online at Mail Online and Metro.co.uk.
Today, we urge every reader to help the local businesses featured in our pages get back on their feet as new research shows small firms play a vital role in health and wellbeing in towns and villages.
The Co-operative Group’s analysis of 28,000 localities found that the more empty offices, restaurants and shops there were, the more likely that community was to register a below average score on its Wellbeing Index. A lower score corresponded with a lower quality of education, housing affordability and public transport, as well as less access to green space and fewer community centres.
Co-op chief executive Steve Murrells said: ‘Changes to employment and closing stores brought about by Covid-19 will inevitably have a huge impact on the local economy and household income. We need to remember that a community’s overall wellbeing will also suffer.’
The vital role local businesses play in our lives – and their struggle for survival in the lockdown – prompted DMGT to launch its £5 million advertising giveaway.
We opened applications to firms with no more than 150 staff and a turnover of no more than £6million a year. The scheme was deluged with almost 6,000 applications in just a few days.
You can see today’s first 50 successful firms in our ‘open for business’ advertisement on pages 126-7, with a message urging readers to support the firms. The scheme is being run in collaboration with the Federation of Small Businesses trade body. Each advert has been tailored to the needs of the individual firm, with help from our Mail Metro Media marketing experts.
Many of the firms are just emerging from lockdown and desperate to attract customers to reboot their incomes after ten weeks in deepfreeze. Many have gone to extreme lengths to survive and some have heroically helped on the frontline of the Covid-19 crisis, supplying meals or personal protective equipment to those in need.
Anne Iarchy, who runs the Slimmer U Club in North London, has been forced to rethink her business model, which relies on face-to-face coaching to achieve weight loss, improve energy levels, health, confidence and self-esteem.
Many of her clients are selfemployed and have been financially affected by the crisis. She has cut fees and now 95 per cent of her business is online. She says the advertising will be used to further grow her business online.
She says: ‘Covid has shown that obesity, high blood pressure, type-2 diabetes are all underlying conditions that heighten mortality rates if you catch the virus. This can all be reduced by adopting a healthy lifestyle. I want to help with that.’
Meanwhile, a butcher to the catering and food production trade for 31 years, M&W Meats, saw its trade rapidly diminish after the crisis hit. The firm in St Austell, Cornwall, was forced to furlough nine staff but quickly launched a nationwide meat delivery service at the website meatsupermarket.com, selling to consumers at trade prices.
‘We deliver chilled fresh meat and meat products direct to the door at prices which beat most supermarkets and other online meat retailers,’ said owner Claire Myatt. ‘But we now need to get our name out to the nation. We think this advertising fund would be a great help.
‘We are a family-run business and have a very successful wholesale company, supplying shops, caterers and food production, but since Covid-19 all our trade has greatly diminished.’