GROWING YOUR BUSINESS

THE LAST WORD

Researching your business

Whether you’re just starting out or looking to grow, research is all-important to ensure you put your investment in the right place and impress potential funders. Putting in the time and effort before you start on a project can pay dividends down the line – and potentially save you money. Ruth Hawley, senior library officer at Nottingham Library, offers some step-by-step advice.

‘Consider if you need any form of licence or local registration for your business’

MARKET RESEARCH

Know your audience and sector. Is there demand for your product or service? You can obtain professional market research reports for a range of sectors that show recent and projected trends, key players in your sector and useful statistics on consumer activity.

LOCAL INFORMATION

Deciding where to locate your business premises? Want to know more about the population of your target area? Local information can give you the tools to find your target market and evidence the need for your business to potential funders.

Your county or city council will have lots of open access data such as mapping, demographic information (due to be updated following the 2021 census), strategic plans, reports and analysis of statistics for your area on a wide range of topics.

ADMINISTRATIVE MATTERS

Keeping your paperwork in order is crucial, so make sure you’re up to speed with your legal obligations. Companies House (for business registration) and HMRC (for tax) are good places to start. Also consider if you need any form of licence or local registration for your business, such as for food and entertainment, taxi driving, health and beauty, campsites or animal welfare.

Contact your district or city council for licensing matters. And don’t forget music licensing if you want to play recorded music on your business premises. TheMusicLicence is issued by Chamber strategic partner PPL PRS.

You might not have thought about libraries as the go-to place for your business information needs but there are many resources available – from books, e-books and eaudio on a range of topics, to free access to newspapers and magazines online.

Your local library service can also help you find information and signpost you to sources of local support.

Additionally, Nottingham and Nottinghamshire library members can access a range of specialist resources including COBRA (Complete Business Reference Advisor), which has factsheets on all aspects of running a business, as well as other information sources referred to elsewhere in this article.

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY: WHAT IS IT AND WHY DOES IT MATTER?

The majority of businesses will have intellectual property, whether branding such as a logo or name, product designs, artwork or written work under copyright.

Protecting your IP means that other people can’t use it without your permission, preventing others from capitalising on your great idea. On the other side of the coin, you need to make sure that someone hasn’t already had the same lightbulb moment as you, as infringing their rights could prove very costly.

There are three main types of intellectual property which can be registered with the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) – patents, trademarks and registered designs.

Patents protect things that can be made or used; trademarks protect branding, such as a name or logo; and registered designs cover the “look” of a product. There is a charge for registering these.

Copyright protection is an automatic right and free of charge. It covers written work –both literary and otherwise – sound and visual recordings, artistic works and broadcasts.

But before you get to registration of a patent, trademark or design, you need to carry out searches on the relevant database to see if anyone is already using something similar to your idea.

You’ll need to think outside the box and use a variety of search terms to ensure a through scan for what is known as “prior art” – in other words, whether your idea is unique to you and not too close to anything already registered by someone else.

In the case of trademarks, these are registered according to a number of classes dependent on the intended scope of usage, so think about how you may want to expand your business, as it is cheaper to apply for multiple classes at once.

For example, if you run a coffee shop, there is one class for the retail outlet itself, but if you wanted to sell mugs featuring your branding, you’d need a second class to cover that. The main places to do these free searches for UK registration are as follows: