Women in Business: West Midlands economy needs more female entrepreneurs

ALL this week TheBusinessDesk.com will be focusing on news relating to the important issue of women in business. 

THE West Midlands – and the UK in general – needs more female entrepreneurs in order to boost the region’s economy, UK Trade and Investment has said.

The trade body said that if the UK had the same level of female entrepreneurship as the US, there would be 600,000 extra women-owned businesses in the country; contributing an additional £42bn to the economy.  

However, it said there was still a long way to go before these figures were likely to be achieved.

It said that according to last year’s Department for Business Innovation and Skills’ small business survey, just 18% of businesses are women-led – around 860,000 SMEs. In 2012, female-led SMEs contributed around £75bn to the UK economy.
The sectors attracting the biggest increases in women-led businesses are transport, retail and distribution.

However, UKTI said that while these areas are important to the West Midlands, it was manufacturing that was currently driving the regional economy forward.  

Christine Hamilton, deputy regional director, UKTI West Midlands, said: “We know from research done by the Federation of Small Businesses that more female entrepreneurship could be encouraged by promoting alternative sources of financing, more mentoring, facilitated networking and promoting female business role models.

“I’ve attended many women-led networking groups in the past year and have seen first-hand how few female business role models there are in the West Midlands – especially women who are doing well in exporting.”

To highlight the shortfall, UKTI said it would be holding a special event during Export Week where the role of women and the potential to increase the number of female entrepreneurs would be discussed.

The event, The Art of International Trade for Women businesses, takes place on November 12 at The Rep, Birmingham from 10am – 12.30pm. The event will be followed by a networking lunch.

Speaking at the event will be Fiona Toye, chief executive of Birmingham-based medals and civic regalia manufacturer, Toye, Kenning & Spencer. She will outline how her company has had to adapt and change as the economy has gone up and down, and the key role exports have played in the firm’s ongoing success.

Another keynote speaker is Nicky Thomson, who set up her textile business just over 10 years ago, and with the help of UKTI, is now selling to Europe, America and Japan. She will describe how she has overcome the range of challenges along the way to succeed overseas.

Ms Hamilton said analysts had suggested that one of the reasons women-led businesses were not exporting as much as they could be, was because they tended to be in service, rather than the production sectors.

“But this shouldn’t stop women selling overseas.  We have numerous successful female-led businesses in our region, involved in service sectors, such as distribution, who are exporting successfully.   With the rise of e-commerce and the ease of setting up online sales platforms – so many more women in the West Midlands could sell their products and services overseas,” she said.  

“Recent growth figures show the economy in the West Midlands has turned a corner and has been growing over the last few years. This is particularly the case with exports – our region leads the field in exports with an increase of a massive 18% over the past year.

“If we can encourage more women to export, just think how much better the region could do.”

For more details on Export Week visit: http://www.exportweek.ukti.gov.uk/full