A MALVERN jewellery maker’s business has reached new heights all thanks to one of the stars from BBC show Dragons Den.
Theo Paphitis, one of the country’s most successful and wealthiest businessmen, has raised the profile of Anna Mcloughlin’s company ‘Anna Fine Jewellery’ just by the click of a button.
Mr Paphitis’ Small Business Sunday scheme (#SBS) sees him retweet several independent businesses each week from those which have tweeted him on a Sunday night describing what they are all about in just 140 characters.
The aim of the scheme is to promote the country’s small businesses and with the star having almost 500,000 Twitter followers, the retweets can provide a real boost to those chosen.
And last week there was much joy for Anna, who spends a lot of her spare time as part of Malvern band Jack of All, after she realised the high profile buisnessman had retweeted her message.
The 39-year-old arts enthusiast set up her hand crafted business ten years ago.
She told the Observer: “I’ve sent tweets to Theo on and off but never really followed it religiously but to be honest I completely forgot about it.
“I came back from my son’s school concert and thought ‘why were they so many notifications’ and realised Theo had retweeted my message. It was a bit of a shock but very exciting.
“Since then my Twitter and Facebook followers have gone up quite a lot and the amount of interactions have gone up massively. There’s a constant flow of people saying congratulations and sharing things.”
Miss Mcloughlin will now get the opportunity to meet Mr Pathitis at a special event in February which will see other #SBS winners gather together in a single environment.
“I’m quite looking forward to the event,” Anna added.
“My ethos of my business is that it’s small and local and it will be very interesting how I fit in because I am imagining a lot of people will be going aiming to make their businesses big as possible and that’s not what I’m about.”
A statement from Mr Paphitis on the scheme’s website reads: “I was struck by the number of business owners on Twitter who wanted to tell me about their new products and services. Small Business Sunday was born so that people have a specific time slot to tweet and can pitch their ‘sell’ directly to me.
“My vision is that everyone who has ever won an #SBS re-tweet from me becomes part of a friendly club. Like-minded individuals can share successes and learnings.
“I know I have been lucky in business and I am keen now to spread goodwill to others, of course not forgetting that very often, you make your own luck by making use of every opportunity.”
For more information about the scheme visit www.theopaphitissbs.com.
