Britain's Entrepreneurial Elite

The trees are starting to turn. The kids are all off for a new term, nay, year. I finally fancy buying some clothes (summer clothes just don't do it for me). Yes, it's a new season. So, it's time to find out what NEW, EXCITING things I've been trying recently. However, there are quite a few of them, so I think I'll split it into two blogs - business and pleasure. Let's start with business.

I opened and ran a shop
I now know how it feels to be one of the Apprentii. My business decisions weren’t captured on film for the cheers and jeers of a nation, but that was only because, thank God, no-one had the time to follow me around with a video camera. For the latter half of July, and most of August, I felt like episode seven of the last series was on permanent loop, and I was stuck in it.

My Apprentice-ing was because we'd decided a pop-up shop would be an excellent way to promote our books. August in Edinburgh: thousands of people here for the Fringe, loads of eager bookish types swarming around the tents at the Book Festival, streets thronged with eager punters. Business would be booming!

First problem: finding an actual shop to pop-up in. There have been alarming statistics recently about how many retail premises are currently empty around the country – Edinburgh is no exception. Once you start looking for shops to rent, you realise how many of them have promising ‘To Let’ signs outside them. But do any of them want to have tenants for a fortnight? No, they do not. You would not believe how tricky it is to find somewhere in close proximity to the Book Festival, that you can rent out for two weeks. However, we eventually managed it (I say 'we' - I, as Project Manager [PM in Apprentice parlance] had delegated it to an intern. Hey, it was fine, they were allowed to use Google, which the actual Apprentii are not. Which is never explained - they're not planning going back in time and running a business in 1982, are they?).

Three of us did what I shall grandly term ‘a site visit’. (Again, I know the rules of being a successful candidate: you need at least three people involved in any decision so that you can blame the other two if something goes tits up, thus saving yourself in the boardroom). The space looked dauntingly large, as it was entirely empty. Even the floor needed sorting out (bashed-up concrete wasn’t going to be a good look for our upmarket shop-ette). As the threat of more phone calls to organise furniture hire and flooring rose in front of me, I had my first Helen-from-the-Apprentice moment (ie an idea of enormous efficiency; rather than the many Tom-from-the-Apprentice moments I’d had up to that point – ie, ideas that were fine, but not going to be particularly useful). I suddenly remembered the company who build our book fair stands were based nearby. They had chairs, tables, and giant panels with our book jackets on them. They could probably sort the floor out, and some lighting. Our shop could look HEAVILY BRANDED without me having to brief a mass of extra design and print work. One phone call later and a delivery date was arranged. YES. I could feel Nick Hewer smiling in relief.

He’d have rolled his eyes heavenwards, though, when I missed an email and got texted by my colleague who was on a train, saying the guys with the van were waiting to set up the furniture, but didn’t have a key to get into the shop. Good job taxis are fast, and Edinburgh is small, is the lesson there, as I hared off to the estate agent’s... It also never occurred to me that anyone would buy more than one book and not be the kind of person who always carries a canvas bag, so none of us sorted those out either. I think I am the Bagpuss of shop-keeping: keen on stories, but not much of a business brain.

Next up: designing flyers, posters and borrowing an ‘A-frame’ for outside the shop from The List, who have an office above ours. First of all, we had to organise a daily event, involving two authors doing readings (Apprentice task No. 10: find out what they’re reading from and add it to the stock order. Also make sure we have plenty of the authors’ books available). A further stumbling block: I decided having Wi-fi would make hanging out in our shop appealing for budding JK Rowlings with their laptops. But no-one will do you a Wi-fi contract for less than 3 months, and if you have to sort a phone line through BT, they insist on you signing up for about a year. This is not the future I was promised. My dreams of a credit card reader were dashed. Cash only, for our baby bookshop. (Luckily, the shop was bang next door to a cashpoint. Canny.)

And there were more basic things we needed to do: wash the windows so people could see in, for one. Karren Brady's eyebrows would've shot off the top of her head in dismay at how long it took me – seriously, I should’ve invested in a professional window cleaner, who could’ve done the job in 15 minutes, tops. I was hindered by having no hot water, is my excuse. You’d also be surprised at how long it takes to assemble a shelf-full of books so that they look like they do in the shops. And then replenish them when someone has the temerity to actually buy one.

Another Apprentice moment – what are the health and safety restrictions around offering punters free cake? (Every little helps to encourage a sale). I’ll tell you: unless you’re fully authorised by the council, you can’t do anything with buttercream icing, in case it goes off and causes salmonella or something. Brownies and flapjacks it was; first time I'd made brownies and they were amazeballs, even if I do say so myself. As the week progressed, we promised free booze in the evenings too. This proved very popular, and profits rose accordingly. (Note to struggling businesses: offer wine for free and people will find that they are too drunk to care about paying money for stuff and also that they feel obliged to buy something; a colleague said people would be 'suspicious' about being offered free cake, so we put a mug on the front desk suggesting they donate to charity. We made about £50 just from that. People are weird, aren't they?)

We were open for a week (staffed by people from work, essentially working two jobs, only one of which we were paying them for, obviously), from 2-6pm, then I spent half of a Bank Holiday Monday putting all the unsold stock back in boxes to deliver back to the office.

It has to be said, running a shop is really hard work, and you can see why so many small businesses are struggling in the current climate. It is way harder than it looks, and there are about a million things to juggle (stock, staff, invoicing, ordering, packing up, unpacking, trying not to have the place look like Cardboard City because you haven't done the recycling, going home afterwards to make more damn cake); I thought running a shop just involved standing behind a till hoping people wanted to buy your stuff, so I take my hat off to anyone who does it full-time. And next time I watch The Apprentice, I may be slower to judge all those contestants who are given two days to arrange and run a business they probably have absolutely no prior knowledge of, and manage not to make a huge loss. Then again, maybe I'll just laugh even harder as they fuck everything up, whilst thinking, 'What kind of idiot doesn't think to get a load of plastic bags in when they're running a shop?'.