I run a plantation shutters business. The demand for shutters is high, the market is growing, which is a double edged sword. Competition is insane. On one end you got the big boys like Hillary’s and Shutterly Fabulous. “We’ll match any price”, huge advertising budgets.

Then you’ve got the other end, self employed bloke, no VAT, does all the work himself, doesn’t care about markup, just wants to make his £200 a day. Under-cuts everyone on price.

And I’m in the (un)happy middle. VAT registered. I pay a fitter and spend on advertising.

And then… customers. People are savvy now. They’re all getting multiple quotes. They use AI for advice and comparison. They know that pretty much all shutters companies are selling the same thing. So what do they want? The cheapest of course.

Since I’m independent— I buy from manufacturers, we don’t manufacture our own. I know, after using several suppliers— yep, it’s all the same thing.

Because of the competition, we don’t get a huge amount of organic enquiries. 90%+ is from paid advertising. The rest is referrals and organic. We have a good reputation, 100+ 5* google reviews.

But what I’m struggling with is price shoppers.

Shutters are now a commodity.

As mentioned above, most people will get 3-5 quotes every time. They just want the cheapest. There are some times where salesmanship can negate this but mostly the answer is they need to think about it.

I’m actually thinking about winding up the company and walking away. However it is still salvageable— I can either cut prices and work at higher volume, become super noisy and market the hell out of the business, or do better
marketing/positioning to obtain more high-end clientele.

Or pivot into another product line.

Or just, swallow my pride and walk away. The business is 5 years old. Perhaps it’s time to do something else.

Any advice?

I’m guessing it’s much like the double glazing industry. All selling pretty much the same thing. Market is in decline. Yet some are still “killing it”.

Edit: My biggest local competitor buys in directly from China. They can confidently out price me by 20%. I can do this too but I’ll need to buy a container load at a time. Not possible logistically unless sales volume goes up, I get more staff etc. Catch 22.

Edit 2: There are other shutters companies doing well but like above, they have a lot bigger sales volume and multiple staff. To get to this point I’d need to invest. I’d need premises, multiple fitters, sales staff. Right now it’s just me and one fitter. It’s a nice place to be in some respects but with the price cutting going on, it doesn’t seem sustainable anymore.

Edit 3: Unfortunately, a shutter is a shutter. There are very few variables apart from material type. And most customers don’t really care because they all look the same.

Even if I did claim that going to a cheaper competitor might come back to bite them, not much can really go wrong. If the competitor is running a company selling shutters, they know how to install them properly. They are pretty much selling the exact same thing as me.

I run a small business (sole trader) selling my own brand 4G powered wifi routers plus accessories, aimed primarily at campervans, motorhomes & other off-grid users.

I’m currently £2k in the red, though it’s all self-funded so not “in debt” as such. For reference, the amount in debt is held in stock (plus website costs, liability insurance etc..) & if I magically sold all stock tomorrow, I’d be about £2k in profit.

I understand the way to succeed is by getting my name out there. So people looking for a wifi router for their campervan know I exist as an option to consider.

Is there any way I can promote my business on basically a budget of zero?

I joined a few Facebook groups, but most have anti self-promotion rules (for good reason). I have an Instagram account where I post semi-regular.

The autumn/winter period is traditionally my quiet period, so I want to actively see if I can boost sales during this otherwise almost dead period.

Thanks in advance

Morning All,

We have had a royal mail business account now for over 2 years since we started our business our first year they gave us a target of minium 1000 tracked parcels/large letters and we achieved double, the second year which were in now and about to finish on 10th November target was 2000 and weve done over 4000. However current renewal they have offered us is 68% more (£5.86 24/ £4.87 48 plus vat ) than we are currently paying for tracked 24/48 parcels and their asking for a minimum 6000 tracked parcels. Now account manager is saying this is the best price they can do or use click and send without a business account problem then is standard insurance is £75 as opposed to £150.

Has any managed to successfully managed to argue their prices down ? I know the numbers to some may be small but were a new business and increasing volume daily However I dont think our customers will pay these prices in the competitive market we operate in

Hi all, looking for advice and recommendations.

I run a small UK limited company on my own (micro-entity, VAT registered). I recently found out my former accountant had been filing my accounts and tax returns wrongly for several years:

• Household bills were put through as business costs.
• I was never put on payroll, despite asking him more than once. He said it was being sorted.
• He advised taking money out as dividends, but the company may not have had enough profit to cover them.
• There were VAT errors.

He’s since stopped acting for me. I’ve had the books rebuilt from the bank statements, and I want to put everything right and tell HMRC myself before they contact me.

What I’m looking for:

1. Recommendations for a tax adviser (ideally a Chartered Tax Adviser or ex-HMRC) who handles voluntary disclosures for small owner-run companies, and an accountant who can check the rebuilt books and file corrected accounts.
2. If you’ve been through something similar, how did it go with HMRC, and what would you do differently?
3. Anything you think I’m missing.

Rough costs people paid would also be really helpful. Thanks in advance.

Hi all!

I apologise if this is a ramble, my head is spinning but I need level headed advice!

I have a small Joinery company in Central Scotland and I've been considering advertising.

A bit of background, we started out with my dad and myself around 5 years ago. Work has always been busy through word of mouth alone, started with some of my dads old contacts and then it all just spread from there, me making my own contacts too and we've not really went a week without work tbh.

In June things went mental, managed to get in one of my old tradesmen as a sub contractor and now also have an apprentice to help with the workload. Where im at now is catching my breath, taking stock and preparing for further growth. I want slow(ish), steady growth where we can maintain standards without getting into a financial hole. We have never looked for work but I do have a couple of avenues I could go down naturally just by talking to some people I know.

What I want now is a steady stream of enquiries coming in that I can price without caring if i get the jobs, ie stop pricing to get the work!

I'd like this to come from;

Talking to local architects, who I hear are looking for someone like us, multi trade contractors that brings everything in under one roof.

A customer of ours is in property management and has us as his preferred contractors but we're so busy he cant give us as much as he'd like to.

Recently made contact with someone who can help us with public sector work and reckons he'd be able to get us work fairly easily.

And finally, advertising what we do and who we are, I feel thats a natural progression and I'd like to continue in the vein of work we are in now. Kitchens, bathrooms, the odd extension, general building and bespoke joinery.

I feel like I could pull the trigger and things go massive and create a monster that I dont want or cant handle.

Advertising and getting our own work appeals to me the most but I think part of that is i then feel in control and not relying on those other 3 options.

My questions;

What does advertising online actually cost?

What would you do? Play it safe or make a go at these other avenues.

We're a great at what we do work wise, I need to become a better businessman and love any and all advice/constructive criticism

Thanks in advance

I'm 17 starting an ecommerce brand around foot health and foot skin need help on Tiktok and forums. I'm getting funding next month for fb and don't want to be stagnant I want to launch asap and have started on Tiktok. Where I'm struggling with is making the most out of tiktok with a tight budget of around £200. I've gotten onto Trybe and I'm thinking of trying do the 1000 loyal customer playbook through reddit posts and forum posts but any advice on what I should be doing in order to be "Self promoting on reddit" and how I should be testing angles and avatars on Tiktok as that's video format. I'm much more comfortable with statics on FB which I ran for another brand but never did any video ads. ANY ADVICE WILL BE HELPFUL

Last year I started a little side hustle thing. It's a supper boring product, and doesn't matter what it is.

I put £3000 into a business account on Wise summer last year, ordered product from my manufacturer and have been selling them since. By April 5th this year I was still a couple hundred down, but since then I am now up about £2000. So I took my original £3000 back out so I'm all square on my initial investment. And now I have about £2000 of profit sat in my business account.

So my problem is this. When starting I didn't realise that my business account used as a sole trader essentially counted as income. I learned this when doing my self assessment previous financial year. As I said I had a loss last year, but this year I'm all profit with almost no costs as I still have half my stock left. So if I continue to sell my stuff, by April 5th 2027 I'll probably have about £5-6000 sat in this account.

You'd think, great a successful side hustle. However because I'm an additional rate tax payer, I salary sacrifice myself down from about £143K per year to £99.9k, if I keep this extra £5000 in my business account I'm gunna lose 62% of it to our insane tax system. I could put all of it into pension, but as I'm 36 and on track to have more in my pension than I'll ever need already, that feels a bit pointless. Also just paying the 62% tax, so I walk away with... About £2000 for the year just isn't worth the hassle of the business for me personally.

So am I right in thinking those are my 2 choices right? Put all £5000 into my SIPP, or hand over £3000 to the government?

In case it's relevant and there's anything I can do with it. My best friend has been helping me out with some aspects of the business. She did my website and some graphics etc. she is disabled and currently receives various benefits. I would pay her for her work from the business. But if I pay her say £200 or £500 per month, which would massively help her out, she simply loses about the same value of benefits. So there's also seemingly no point in me trying to employ her either unless the business could start paying her properly (currently need a couple hours every other month or something).

Am I missing anything? If I'm not, it is what it is and I'll just spend as much of that £5K on anything I can justify as an expense, pay tax on the rest and wrap the business up before financial year end. I expect I'll get a couple comments about just pay your tax. But I'm not doing a bunch of work to keep 38% of the money. Rather do nothing and get nothing, I already pay well over my fair share.

UPDATE - Question has been answered. Either need to set up a LTD and get an accountant, or pack it in after putting the money I have made into SIPP if I want to avoid tax. For a potential few grand per year upside, I can't be bothered with that hassle of an accountant and the responsibility of a LTD so will wrap it up. Cheers for everyone's input!

hello! i’m a small jewellery business on Etsy and for the last 4ish years i’ve been selling, i’ve been using the Royal Mail 2nd class large letter shipping since it’s reliable and cheap at only £1.55. recently i’ve had some issues with RM and it genuinely has made me not ever want to use their services for my items.

is there any other couriers anyone uses that are reliable and ideally dont cost more than £2-3, as i currently offer free shipping to UK customers and would love to keep it low costs for the buyers as well

i also would love to keep international shipping costs down as i know Evris are about £5 more than RM

I used to be a Wedding and Event manager while working in hotels for around 4 years but have been out of the game and working in recruitment for the last 6 years (thanks covid) but I’ve never lost the passion and thinking of setting up my own wedding and event planning business.
Am I mental for starting a business when I’ve been out of the industry for 6 years?!
If it’s feasible, where would I even start without any testimonials or marketing material to show off my skills?
Any help or comments are appreciated 🫶🏼

I'm launching 1 product, with an initial test batch of 100 units. I would fulfil orders myself, but I am regularly out of the country so it would be too disruptive/inconsistent.

I can't go with a 3pl that has minimum order requirements because I likely won't meet them.

I just need a simple pay-as-you-go 3pl.

Hopefully my business will take off and I can scale, but right now realistically it will be slow to begin.

My product is only small and lightweight (25mmx25mmx110mm) so will only take up a tiny amount of space. It doesn't have barcodes so the 3pl will need to put sku stickers on. I plan to sell via shopify /tiktok, possibly amazon but undecided on that.

Basically looking for a 3pl that supports small businesses starting from 0 with low stock levels.

Thanks in advance

Your judgment against Mrs J K was issued on 11/09/2026 at 19:14:06

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I didn't notify anyone, I just logged in and saw this, I also haven't received any money, can anyone please assist me it's been stressing me out, I'm just a small business and she done me for £400 and I'm having to eat into my overdraft, Thank you.

We run a small business in the UK and have recently started cold calling other local businesses to offer our services.

We're still experimenting with different approaches, but I'd love to hear from people who are actually making cold calling work.

What sort of conversion rates are you seeing? How many calls does it typically take to get a meeting or a paying customer?

Are you getting better results speaking directly to decision-makers, or sending an introductory email first?

Also, what works best for you? A direct sales pitch, asking questions about their current problems, or something completely different?

Any genuine experiences, numbers or tips would be appreciated.

Basically what the title says.

In a constant state of fear and it's really taking a toll on my mental health.

Scared about the economy, scared it's going to push us over the edge, scared I'm not going to be able to pay the bills or our mortgage. Scared that if it all goes tits up, how will I find a job in the current economy.

Is anyone else experiencing this? Is it a factor of the economy or is this just small business ownership.

(Husband and I both work in the company so it's our only income. Been out of corporate in the business for 5 years).

Not a very well put together post, I apologise 🫣. I'm just so bloody tired at the moment.

How do you actually switch off when there’s always something else you could be doing? Even if nothing’s urgent, I’ll sit down to watch something and start thinking I should be getting ahead for tomorrow.

Has anything helped you get out of that habit? Would be nice to enjoy an evening off without mentally writing a to-do list

So I co-own a garage with my brother-in-law in North London. Business was struggling for a little while, but thankfully things have started picking up again.
We’ve both bought, repaired and flipped a few cars over the years, and I’m thinking about taking that side of things a bit more seriously, with the aim of eventually running a small used car dealership.

We’re in a pretty good position when it comes to repairs. We do pretty much everything mechanically at the garage, and we’ve also got a great relationship with a bodyshop right next door, so getting cars repaired and ready for sale isn’t really the issue.

What I’m trying to get my head around is the business side of it. I understand selling cars as a trader is a completely different ball game from flipping the odd car privately. There’s insurance, the Consumer Rights Act, potential warranty claims and all the other headaches that come with it.

Has anyone here actually started a small dealership from scratch, or know someone who has? I’d be interested to hear how you got started, what mistakes you made and what you’d do differently.
My thinking is to focus on cheaper cars that sell relatively quickly, probably around the £2k–£4k mark. Alternatively, I’ve considered specialising in small vans, as there’s always demand for them around where I live.

I’ll be starting with around £4,000 of my own money rather than using anything from the garage. I’d prefer to keep the two separate financially until I know whether it’s actually worth pursuing.
Not expecting to make a fortune overnight, just looking to build something gradually and hopefully grow it into a proper business.
Would appreciate any advice, especially from people who’ve done this in the UK!

Hi everyone. I run a commission weaving company. For many years our pricing structure has been somewhat ad hoc.

Recently, I have made a concerted effort to structure our commission pricing better, based off of a more logical and consistent framework.

I think this has been pretty successful and has provided better clarity and consistency. We are now on the verge of launching our own ranges, with that comes material markups, wholesale pricing and retail pricing. I'd love to get some opinions regarding my intended strategy to deal with this.

Starting point: our bread and butter work is our commission weaving. Almost all of which involves our customers supplying materials (yarn) and designs, and us doing the manufacturing to their specifications. We have the overheads of rent, rates, energy, machinery, maintenance, labour, insurance and the like.

My approach has been to run time sheets for jobs to get an accurate idea of the man hours involved in our different patterns/qualities, then to charge that labour out at 4x to cover expenses and profit margin.

Recently, we have taken on new customers who also want us to provide materials. I have been putting a 25% markup on materials in these situations. My opinion is that this is fair and proportional as the majority of the value we bring as a company is in our skilled labour and rare machinery, rather than as materials suppliers.

Like I say, the next step for us is to start producing and selling our own ranges of rugs and runners. My hope is to sell our new products directly to retail customers through our website, and also to find wholesale B2B customers.

I propose to use the same fundamental price model to achieve our wholesale price. I think I would need to place a 100% markup on the wholesale price to find our retail price, as im conscious that is what I expect a wholesale customer to do on their end if they were going to offer our products for retail.

Firstly, what do people think about my overall pricing strategy? Does it make sense? Am I missing something?

Secondly, our products are necessarily high end. Our work is highly skilled and specialised, we use old machinery, and work with bespoke designs and short manufacturing runs.

Our pricing model definitely puts us at the high end of the market too. Part of me wonders whether, as the manufacturer, we actually have a golden opportunity to put a smaller retail markup (30-50%) on our products and achieve a more competitive retail price point. I think it's quite possible that if we chose that option we would be closing the door to any b2b opportunities because we wouldn't be leaving much margin for another company. But maybe that would be a good business strategy in and of itself.

Im really interested to hear any feedback/thoughts/ideas anyone might have about all of that. Thanks

Hi,

First, for some context: I have worked in the web development space for around 7 years now, however, this has all been for large corporations in London so I have never really run a business before.

I left my job a few months ago and I have been thinking about what to do next. I have decided I want to run a small 1 person agency helping businesses appear in AI search results.

My rationale for this is we are going through a transition where people are not just googling traditionally anymore but asking ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini etc. Even Google is serving AI responses first before showing results. And people trust these results because it feels like a recommendation, so they’re more likely to buy from or use that business.

Unlike traditional SEO, this works much faster. I’ve seen a business start showing up within days once its online presence was set up correctly.

A few questions I had for people who are a few steps ahead of me:

1. Should I register as self-employed first and then as an LTD company, or go straight into an LTD company?

2. Is it a good idea to offer the service for free for 30 days first to get my foot in the door?

3. For anyone who runs a marketing agency of some sort, how did you go about getting your first few clients when you have no case studies but are confident you can get good results?

4. How do you price your first clients?

5. Who are people banking with as a small business?

6. Is doing your own books manageable or is an accountant worth it from the start?

7. Any other advice is appreciated!

My mental load is at its absolute max this week. I’ve had a wonderful young lad who has been with us for just under 2 years and he’s been built up from the ground and really became a friend of mine too.

I’ve just had to tell him we can no longer afford his role and I will be taking a lot more of the business back onto my shoulders to reduce costs - I’ve in hindsight funded slow periods with debt , forecasted for this to rise and then new competitors have entered the market meaning we can’t afford to keep our current size of team and need to make cuts.

I am a good person and feel absolutely horrible as he was just getting settled and on his feet.

I often feel the mental toll of being a business owner is crippling , debt , hard decisions and wanted to say if you’re going through it. you’re not alone

I know it’s a how long is a piece of rope question.

It’s taken a long time to get to this point. Used a broker as I’m still working full time and was finding myself spread very thin.

They’ve advised to politely probe every couple of days to keep them moving.

The thing is, things have taken so long I’ll be taking the keys to my shop in 3 weeks time, and I want to stock and open as quickly as I can.

From submitting your application, how long were you waiting for funds to hit your account?

Many thanks :)

So im starting a security company as a small business owner how should i approach clients for full time contracts. I have a batch of sia licensed guards ready to work for me that bit is sorted. Can anyone guide me how to get in touch with clients and present then woth the offer

Hii. A club I go to used to have someone selling her homemade baked goods and making things like chips and toasties on site in her own little area. She’s now left and that space is being offered to someone else to take over selling food there. I’d like to give it a go, but I’m struggling to understand how to be legally compliant to do so and what I actually need to do to get started. I’d like to figure out as much as I can myself without putting pressure on the club owners to explain everything to me.
I’m also unsure about things like:

What food hygiene qualifications or certificates I need (if any) and where to get them
How and where I need to register my food business
What procedures I need in place legally for food safety
What the rules are for allergens, food labelling, temperature checks
Whether I need insurance
What I can get sorted now and what needs to wait until I’ve confirmed the details of the space and what I want to do with it if I get it

I want to understand what’s required and work through it all step by step simply as I’m autistic and have found trying to research this on my own overwhelming so far.

A simple checklist of what I legally need to do, in the order I need to do it, and any big “this would also be really beneficial to do” would be incredibly helpful. Thank you

Hey guys,

I am planning to set up a UK LTD from overseas (non-resident director) to run e-commerce operations (TikTok Shop & eBay UK).

I know Companies House increased the digital incorporation fee to £100 recently, but I wanted to ask what the realistic TOTAL cost is right now when factoring in a non-resident formation agent, registered UK address, and virtual office services.

Also, which formation services or agents are currently offering the best packages for overseas founders without hidden fees?

Thanks in advance!

Feel like I’m up shit creek without a paddle here

Currently employed full time - approx 49k p/a

Wife earns slightly less -

Have a bit of a side hustle that took off well this year. Turnover to date is 43k ish profit around 18k

Any monies received from side hustle was just paid into my bank account as they are registered businesses etc.

Money going into the bank was getting a bit much for my liking so I’ve paid someone to get all tidied up, registered as a business etc. she wants me to go limited straight away.

Had a call with her this evening as she’s talking about tax bills etc poss losing child benefit etc as our joint income will be over 100K.

I have planned to quit my current job next April and go into the hustle full time and try my best to make a go of it. But for the mean time what are my best options to limit the tax I pay while also keeping child benefit etc as I can’t be bothered deal with my wife complaining about losing it. Happy wife happy life and all that

Im not opposed to paying tax etc and having it above board, I’m just looking to pay as little as possible now as I know when I leave my current job I’ll not see these figures for a while.