The Aurora Project

The business I run is a creative business, which basically means that myself and my business partner create our products, from initial design through to manufacturing and packaging. Like alot of businesses we love our products and we assumed that everyone else would love them too but it was a cold slap of reality when we realised that we had no idea how to give other people the opportunity to love our products (and, fingers crossed, part with their hard earned cash to buy them).

When you've expended so much time and money producing the thing you want to sell it can be very difficult to accept that people aren't just going to knock on your door asking to buy it. You may laugh at my naievity but I don't think we're the only business making that mistake if the failure rates for new enterprises are anything to go by.

Besides the lack of skills in marketing and sales that many new businesses suffer from it can also be incredibly expensive getting the exposure you need in order to make your venture a real business, which means money coming in as well as going out. So how do you do this?

Well unfortunately it isn't the same answer for every business but for us we needed to be seen by retailers in an environment where they were looking for new and exciting products, things that were made in Britain, by hand and that were a bit different from what you'd get on the high street. What we needed was a trade fair, the The British Craft Trade Fair to be exact.

But with prices for stands costing upwards of £400 pounds for 3 days that's a big outlay for a new business to expend. And that, ladies and gentleman is where the Aurora Project came in.

The Aurora Project is a collective of artists and craftpersons based in Northumberland and Tyneside. The ultimate aim of the project is to support newly emerging and developing businesses run by entrepreneurs within the arts & crafts occupational sector, towards sustainability and increased business growth and survival rates. The project is all about sustaining and increasing levels of businesses within the arts & crafts sector, and therefore employment in the region. This is achieved by delivering a structured programme of business development support and sector led training for the beneficiaries and their micro businesses.

The Aurora Project supported us and enabled us to attend our first trade show last year. It was an incredible boost to our business and without a doubt we would not have the customer base that we have now were it not for that trade show. I'd even go so far as to say we may not have had a business at all, certainly not one that was solvent.

Unfortunately, due to a lack of funding the Aurora Project will come to an end in March this year. This means all that support will be taken away from the regions budding creative entrepreneurs and ultimately from the regons economy as those creative ventures struggle to get off the ground.

Of course by this time next year our business probably won't need the Aurora Project. We'll be in a position to book our own stand at the trade shows we want to attend and we'll have the knowledge and the experience to make our appearances at the shows worthwhile for our business. Which is great for us now, but I can't help but feel very sad that the business we were a year ago, today wouldn't get the same support, wouldn't get the opportunities, wouldn't get the funding, which was so integral to our present success.

I don't fully understand the issues around the funding for the Aurora Project and the reasons why the project won't be continuing but all I do know is that it helped our business. It fulfilled it's aim to support a newly emerging and developing creative business. It helped to sustain and increase our business growth and ultimately helped Rock Paper Scissors survive to 2008.

So what more can I say? To Brian Reid, project manager for the Aurora Project, thank you very much.

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