Three Business Birthday Wishes

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Hurrah! It is Mama Tea’s third birthday today! Three years ago, I set up stall at the Scottish Baby Show in Glasgow and sold our first bag of loose leaf Mama Tea. I didn’t realise then that it was also my birthday of becoming the Mamapreneur

I thought I would blow out the candles and tell you my three business birthday wishes:

Birthday Wish No 1 – Big Mama

I wish that Mama Tea goes from strength to strength. It is not easy bringing a brand to market but we have managed it! It is now our time to grow rapidly and periods of growth are always challenging for any business. I am busy raising investment money for our business and am going to be doing a series of blogs about the challenges of growth. Time to go big, Mama!

Birthday Wish No 2 – International Mama

I wish that we can launch Mama Tea in the US and Europe this year. We also want to change our website so that we can sell direct into as many countries as possible! We are going to be developing an international e-commerce platform over this next year, using the principles of agile development to launch it and develop it. Eventually, we want to sell into every country in the world. Let’s fly, Mama!

Birthday Wish No 3 – Social Mama

I wish that we could increase our social media presence by launching an app, or a map, or a niche social network or whatever the next social trend is! Connecting with our customers and being social. #mamateamap is our current social media experiment. Check it out on Twitter! We are using the principles of in-bound marketing in action to get our brand message out there and connect with our customers! Join our community – social commerce rocks!

I am excited about our future and looking forward to sharing the journey with you!

The Mama

Time to Think Equal

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logo of International Women's Day

Each year Cranfield University compile a report on the numbers of females at board level in FTSE 100 companies. In the UK the figure for the percentage of female board members has plateaued at about 12% since 2008 and in the US it has plateaued at about 14-15%.

The Figures

There were 155 female held directorships, out of 1092, in the FTSE 100 in 2010; 21 of which were executive directors and 134 were non-executive directors. The top ranking board in the FTSE 100 was Burberry with 3 out of its 8 directors female and in second place was Diageo with 4 out of its 11 directors female (note this is the only board with 4 females). There are 14 boards in the FTSE 100 with no females, and in the FTSE 250 it’s even worse with just under 50% of boards being all male.

Time for Change

The introduction to the most recent report, by Theresa May MP and Vince Cable MP, said;

Promoting equality of opportunity and equal treatment for women isn’t just the right thing to do – it’s also crucial to our country’s economic success.

Women bring fresh ideas, perspectives and experiences. As a woman in business I’m keen to understand why women are not achieving board level, I also appreciate it is not all down to men and women need to help themselves. The debate goes on as to how equality is achieved, everyone should achieve based on merit and this is why the idea of gender quotas is distasteful to many, including me. There are no clear answers as to which gender diversity initiatives achieve positive results but we need to keep working at it to encourage and empower women enabling them to achieve their full potential.

Flipboard – our new obsession!

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It was Apple’s iPad App of the year in 2010 and one of Time’s Top 50 Innovations and we love it, it’s changing how we read the news and view our social media. Flipboard is a free app for your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch that calls itself “your (pocket-sized) social magazine”.

Flipboard presents your choice of social networks, news and publications in a magazine style format. The idea is to fill Flipboard with the things you like to read and it then creates a magazine of the bits of the social web that matter to you. You can then flip through the pages of your personal magazine commenting, sharing and saving to read later.

Flipboard has taken the social web and presented it in a gorgeous, glossy readable format. This style of content curation makes the likes of Twitter and Facebook newsfeeds immensely enjoyable to read and all collects it in one place. We predict that content curation will be a significant factor in the coming year for the social web. Flipboard has some big fans here and we’re trying hard to spread the word about what an amazing app it is to use!

Pinterest – The Social Network of 2012?

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You may have heard murmurs of a new social network on the block and wondering if it’s worth getting involved. Let me warn you before you do; it’s addictive!

Pinterest – what is it?

Pinterest describes itself as “a virtual pinboard”. It allows you to created themed pinboards of your favourite images and each time you “pin” something new your followers see it, and similar to other social networks they can like it, comment on it or re-pin it. Install the “Pin It” button to your bookmarks bar and every time you’re browsing the internet you can pin any image you see, it really is that easy!

This site feels and looks very different to the other social networks around and is all about sharing really gorgeous and lovely images. It is really refreshing to find a social network that is not attempting to copy anyone else.

Pinterest Figures

The site is only two years old. There are various figures around the internet suggesting Pinterest is the fastest growing social network or it has over so many new users per month, the exact figures are unknown but this table from a recent study by Experian Hitwise suggests that in November 2011 Pinterest had more users than the much better known sites such as Tumblr and Google+.

In addition to that, Pinterest has been much talked about in the last couple of months so it would be reasonable to assume the number of visits and users of the site has increased since this data was acquired.

Why Join?

Aside from the fact it’s a lot of fun and addictive, from a business point of view it’s a good way to develop a brand image. The site is invite only but you can ask for an invite or if you have some social-media-ahead-of-the-game-friends they are probably already members and can send you an invite. Once joined, think about the image you want for your brand, you may want to have a board with pictures of your products but you will probably also want to have boards of cool things your brand would like to associate with or a board of things you think would be funny to potential customers. As with other social media marketing it never looks good to solely promote your brand and nothing else, Pinterest is a great place to develop a wider brand image and personality away from just your logo and products (here is a really good article to help you think about brand image). So have some fun and start pinning – just don’t blame me if you get addicted!

The ONLY resolution you need in 2012!

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It’s that time of year. We are all making resolutions and setting goals, so its pretty exciting!! 





If you are like me, you have a LONG list of dreams and ambitions, which is great!! However, once we get stuck into the year, we tend to lose that list and forget about the goals we set at the start of the year. 


At the end of last year, READING three books transformed my understanding of marketing my tea business. Therefore I now have two lists of resolutions:


1. My long list of exciting goals.
2. I RESOLVE TO READ





You might be like me – I find a brilliant book, get all excited, start reading it,  make notes, then get distracted and before I know it, it is propping up my ipad as I play Angry Birds.





No more!! 


1. iPad thou will helpest me at all times to read RELEVANT material on apps like Mashable as well as brilliant books;
2. Kindle, thou might not be as sexy as the said iPad, but at least you cannot DISTRACT me with email missives from all and sundry 
3. iPhone, Facebook and Twitter, I love you all but thou will all be getting switched off (I know, heresy!) when I am READING!



Here are some of the exciting ways in which I will be improving in 2012 through more reading:
I will:

  • improve my vocabulary (cool, so a step up from #hurricanebawbag then!)
  • improve my concentration (I really really need this one…….what am I doing again……?)
  • build my self esteem. Wow! With more knowledge comes more confidence. Or I just become really good at pub quizs. But still, I am keen on this benefit!
  • improve my memory ( need this one – see point above!)
  • improve my creativity!! Hurrah!!!!
  • always have something to talk about…….(if I haven’t lost all my friends by boasting about my new vocabulary and winning every pub quiz!)
  • reduces boredom. Bye bye Angry Birds.
Who would have known that reading could give you all that?



http://www.inewsindia.com/2008/09/29/10-benefits-of-reading/


In my next blog post, I’ll tell you which books transformed my understanding of marketing last year!!


With Kind Resolutions,
The Mama

Maximising Business Growth – RSM Tenon Seminar

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Just been to an excellent seminar by John Daly of RSM Tenon, Corporate Finance on how to maximise your business growth. This Mamapreneur is very inspired! The seminar basically contained the key steps to growing your business and achieving the best possible price for your business on exit.

What is your business WORTH?

If you are thinking of exiting your business at some point, you need to think about your potential buyer, who will need to value your business in order to make you an offer. Potential buyers use 3 main methods to value a business:
1.              Net Assets (this is more relevant for property type businesses);
2.              Discounted cashflow (to use this, you identify future cashflow and apply a discount to it) ; and
3.              Earnings based valuation.
The main thing to remember is that accountants are not wholly responsible for valuing businesses. Market forces value businesses; it all depends on what a buyer is willing to pay for a business that matters.
Earnings based valuation
Maintainable Earnings X Price Earnings Ratio = the Business Valuation.
Maintainable Earnings
This is also known as Earnings Before Interest and Taxation (or EBIT). This figure will also take into account the salary of an owner of a business. This highlights a very important point! Buyers are not keen on businesses that are reliant on the business owner. Therefore, buyers are looking for a CREDIBLE MANAGEMENT TEAM. The ideal situation would be for the business owner to almost be a “general manager’ of the business, as the Buyer can replace a General Manager.
Price Earnings Ratio
 This is basically a multiplier of earnings. Trade buyers will typically look at a multiplier of between 4-8. A BRILLIANT TIP is that if your potential Buyer is a PLC, then this is ideal, as quoted companies normally have a higher multiple (average is 15), therefore they might offer a multiple of something like 11 instead of 8.

How do you INCREASE the VALUE of your business?

There is an industry term called MAXIMISING BUSINESS VALUE (MBV). This is the KEY to preparing your business for exit. Between 1 and 5 years from sale, you should be focused on this.
So how to you achieve MBV for your business?
You need an OWNERS PLAN!!
OWNERS PLAN – what do you want to achieve?
1.            Personal Objectives
2.            Business Objectives
3.            Interaction between the two
4.            Timescales
5.            Business vision (definition of success)
6.            Increase business attractiveness
7.            Shareholder agreement needed?
The absolute KEY to creating a valuable business is to define the BUSINESS VISION. Once you have a very firm idea of where you are going and the success you are going to create, this vision then trickles down throughout the business to your management team and staff. It is crucial.
You also have to think carefully about how you can increase your business attractiveness.
How do you do this?
1.              You need a CREDIBLE MANAGEMENT TEAM
2.              You need to create a DEFENSIBLE BUSINESS
3.              SUSTAINABLE (PROFIT) GROWTH TREND
4.              WORKING CAPITAL
5.              ACQUISITIONS
With a credible management team, the business should be able to continue without you.
If you have a defensible business, this means that it is fairly difficult for any potential competitor to steal your business or idea. It is a good idea to try to grow your business in this way.
Make sure that you have good working capital for at least a period of 2 years before selling.
Acquisitions is a great way of growing the business however make sure that you don’t do an acquisition in the year of disposal.
TEN TOP TIPS

1.              Corporate Structure – Buyer/Tax
2.              Legal/Finance – tidy them, especially tax, accounts, contracts, leases, title, licences etc
3.              Be aware of MBO’s – you don’t want to encourage your management team to buy out the business if you have the chance of a trade sale
4.              Trend – manage a sustainable growth trend
5.              Owners – need to have the “Yosho Test” – could the business operate without the business owner for 6 months?
6.              Working Capital – fix it 2 years before exit
7.              Customers – it is absolutely ESSENTIAL that the business is NOT reliant on individual accounts.
8.              Take corporate finance advice if approached
9.              Recognise when to sell
10.           Flex the variables

Mama Tea Shop on Payvment

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It was truly a royal weekend with a happy ending, not just because of a wonderful wedding but because of mama tea being very social at the Scottish baby show! As a part of our social media experiment, we were exploring numerous options and finally found an application on Facebook which blew our tea cosy’s off!
Social commerce is the next big thing to happen and before you know it, almost all  businesses will have their own e-commerce platforms on their Facebook fan pages. How cool is that?! Mama Tea decided to do the same and finally zeroed in on one application which best suited our brand. The name of the application is called Payvment and the beauty of the application is that you can set up your own virtual shop within minutes. The user interface is fairly simple even though the navigation links/icons could have been better.
While most other similar applications either charge you on a monthly basis or take a cut from you sales or in the best case, redirect you to their website in the final step of the purchase, Payvment scores above the rest by being totally free. Yes FREE!!! There are no subscription charges, no commissions and the whole transaction takes place on your Facebook page itself.
While the intricate details of how the application works are better left for you to explore, all you need to do first is “Like” Payvment’s Facebook page and install the application. http://www.facebook.com/payvment.

After this, you are easily directed to setting up your shop where you can upload pics for each of your products along with their descriptions. Everything from shipping costs to sales tax can be customized very easily.You can even offer discounts to customers who “Like” your fan page and include option for bulk purchases. With everything said and done, the payment takes place using a secured portal and the customers can actually choose to pay by card or paypal. As and when a purchase is made, you will get an e-mail notification and you can also customize it to redirect through  Payvment’s IPN to send real-time notifications about an order.

You can visit the Mama Tea Shop here and explore it in detail. Go ahead and purchase your favorite teas from the virtual shop and let us know what you think about it.

SOCIAL COMMERCE ROCKS!!!!