Surviving lockdown by starting a small business by Esme Pearse

Faced with weeks of inactivity through the enforced lockdown, as a Business Studies student at the University of Strathclyde I decided to keep myself busy and start up a small business – SweetSupports. My idea was to offer a personalised service that sends a small box of sweets through the post as a ‘thank you’ or ‘thinking of you’ gift. Each gift box is personalised and contains 400g of sweets. You can have a pink box of sweets to support Breast Cancer or a rainbow box for the NHS, and with every purchase I donate 20% of the profits to these chosen charities.

I used Facebook and Instagram to promote this business and quickly learned that Facebook was the best social media platform to attract new business. One of the ways to grow my business was to run a competition to win a free box of sweets and then I picked a winner from the people who liked and shared my posts. This was a really good way for me to increase online engagement.

On my return to university I plan on keeping my business running in order to provide a SweetSupports box to hit the Christmas market. I have always wanted to start my own business. That’s why I am studying business and this is my first attempt at dipping my toe into the world of entrepreneurship.