What If Staying Small Is the Business Plan?

I have been running Eau Brink Studio for more than ten years.

It is still just me. And I am perfectly happy with that.

I do not have ambitions to employ a team, open several studios, build a national company or spend my days managing other people. I want to create, to teach, to make textile art, develop new ideas, work with materials, welcome people into the studio and earn a living from doing something I have spent years building.

So whenever I hear the government talking about helping small businesses, I listen.

Then I usually start wondering whether they actually mean businesses like mine.

Apparently, I am an SME

Government announcements regularly use the term Small and Medium-sized Enterprise (SME).

That sounds straightforward enough until you realise just how broad the definition is.

An SME can be somebody like me, running a business alone.

It can also be a company employing dozens, or even hundreds, of people.

We may sit under the same SME heading, but our businesses are nothing alike.

A company with 150 employees might be looking for finance to expand into another market, invest in new technology or increase production.

I am thinking about whether I can spend a day developing a new piece of textile art without worrying about everything else that needs doing.

Those are very different needs.

I don't want to scale

One word appears again and again whenever governments talk about business.

Growth.

Then come the others, scaling, investment, expansion, employment, exports.

I understand why.

A growing company creates jobs and brings in money. That is easy to measure and easy to put into a headline.

But what happens when growth isn't the goal?

I have been in business for over ten years, Surely longevity counts for something?

I have kept the doors open, taught people,  sold work, supported other tutors and artists, bought from suppliers, attended events, paid my bills, adapted when circumstances changed. And I am still here.

I don't consider the fact that I am still a one-person business a failure to grow. It is a choice.

I don't need a loan

A lot of the current support being announced for SMEs is about access to finance.

For some businesses, that will be incredibly useful.

If you are buying equipment, taking on premises, employing staff or expanding production, access to finance can make growth possible.

But that isn't what I need.

I don't want to borrow money so that I can make my business bigger, I would much rather have an environment where it is easier to keep a small business sustainable.

The pressures on a business like mine are much more ordinary.

Fabric costs, threads costs, as well as electricity costs. However, there is more, what about the costs of  Insurance, Postage and Packaging. The costs of keeping a website and the card payments take their percentage. There is also the travelling cost and exhibition costs too.

And every time one of those costs rises, I have to decide whether to absorb it or pass some of it on to my customers.

There isn't a government growth scheme that makes that decision any easier.

My business exists so that I can create

This is perhaps the biggest difference between my idea of a successful business and the version I often hear discussed.

I didn't build Eau Brink Studio because I wanted to become a chief executive. I built it because I wanted a creative life, of  course it has to make money, it is a business, not a hobby. However, the business is there to allow me to create and teach.

Who would want to spend their days managing staff rotas, recruitment, meetings and expansion plans? Not me.

I want to sit at the sewing machine and develop an idea, to experiment with fabric and thread,  to create another piece of work simply because I have an idea in my head that I need to explore, to teach somebody who arrives saying, “I can't do this,” and watch them leave with something they have made themselves.

That is success to me.

Staying small isn't the same as standing still

This is another assumption I think we need to challenge.

A small business can change enormously without becoming bigger.

Eau Brink Studio today is not the same business I started more than ten years ago.

My work has changed,

along with my  teaching, the techniques I use, the things I sell as well as the technology, social media and I have changed.

That is development.

It just isn't the kind that can be measured by how many people I employ.

You can grow creatively without growing structurally.

You can improve without expanding.

You can become more skilled without becoming bigger.

You can earn more without building an empire.

I suspect there are many of us

I cannot be the only person who feels this way.

There must be thousands of makers, artists, tutors, photographers, designers, repairers, independent retailers and other sole traders around the country thinking the same thing.

We don't necessarily want investors,  employees, debt, or a second premises.

We want to continue doing good work,  enough customers, and to pay ourselves properly.

We want to cover our costs.

And every now and then, we would quite like enough time left over to remember why we started the business in the first place.

More than ten years later

Perhaps after more than ten years in business I am supposed to be talking about my expansion plans.

I don't have any.

I have creative plans, plenty of them, there are new pieces I want to make, techniques I want to explore, ideas I haven't had time to develop yet, things I want to teach, projects sitting in the back of my mind waiting for their turn.

That is where I want my growth to be.

Not in the number of employees.

Not in the number of premises.

Not in how large I can make the business.

In the work.

So when the next announcement appears telling us how much support is being offered to SMEs, I will read it.

Some of it may be valuable.

Some of it may help many businesses.

But I will probably still be asking:

Does any of this help someone who doesn't want to become a bigger business?

Because after more than ten years, I know what I want Eau Brink Studio to be.

Small.

Sustainable.

Creative.

And mine.

Perhaps staying small isn't a lack of ambition after all.

Perhaps staying small is the business plan.