Nearly 200 businesses have registered with Home HQ, the exciting new project in Shropshire for those who work from home.
Postal and internet applications to register with the scheme have flooded in since it was launched eight days ago with an eight page supplement in the Shropshire Star and a new website www.homehq.shropshire.co.uk
The newspaper and Shropshire Enterprise Partnership, together with the Rural Regeneration Zone, have joined forces to offer the county’s at-home entrepreneurs the chance to benefit from wide promotion and advertising.
This will be through online and printed directories, display cards and regular features in the Shropshire Star.
“Applications have been coming in every day - even on Sunny Sunday - although it was a 7pm mailing when the sun had gone down,” said Fay Easton, project manager for the partnership.
“We’ve received an interesting mix of applications. We even had requests from as far afield as Devon, Cambridge and Surrey but our directory is Shropshire and Shropshire-border based and we could not accept the registrations.”
One of the very first to register was Yolanda Pearson who runs the company No ‘Food Air Miles’ from her home at Church Stoke.
The consultancy business organises food events and advises caterers, publishers and restaurateurs. It puts the emphasis, as its name suggests, on local produce rather than food flown halfway around the world at increasing environmental cost.
Yolanda said of Home HQ: “I think it’s an extremely interesting idea. Only time will tell whether it will help producers but you have to get across to them that they need to make people aware of what they are doing and this should help.”
Meanwhile fitting out work was continuing this week on the new Enterprise HQ centre in Roushill, Shrewsbury, which is due to open on May 18 and will provide a major support unit for the scheme as a retail and business centre dedicated to home-based entrepreneurs.
“May 18 has also been designated as National Homeworking Day but our home-based businesses in Shropshire already know about the benefits of working from home and have found out for themselves how productive it can be,” said Fay Easton.
National Homeworking Day is part of Work Wise UK, a national not-for-profit initiative to promote ’smarter working’ practices such as flexible, remote and mobile working, and working from home.
It is supported by a number of leading organisations including the CBI, TUC, British Chambers of Commerce and BT. The objective is for half the working population, some 14 million, to have had the opportunity to work smarter by 2011.
Helen Page (pictured) runs a successful kitchen design business from her Shrewsbury home - and still finds time to be a full-time mother of six.
Helen’s design handiwork will be on show at the swish new Enterprise HQ centre in Roushill, Shrewsbury, which is due to open on May 18. Her Little Kitchen Company is supplying the showcase kitchen for the new retail and business centre.
The centre is being run by Shropshire Enterprise Partnership whose manager Fay Easton said: “Helen is supplying a show-stopping kitchen. In her interior design capacity she has also worked with me to create a customised walnut and glass retail area.”
Helen was originally a designer who started her kitchen company last year to ensure she had more control over the manufacturing process.
Her indiscriminating approach to employment means she uses a woman plumber and a teenage self-employed electrician as well as hiring workers approaching retirement age.
“As long as people do the job well it doesn’t matter,” she says.
Helen’s 26 year-old twins have left home but her lifestyle means she can collect her seven year-old son from school and be home when her other three offspring, aged 16, 17 and 20, return.
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