Ambitious Gloucestershire businesses bare all at Scale Up Live

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Nicky Godding

Rob Lacey Photographer Editorial, PR & Corporate Photography Headshots, Conferences & Corporate Events Based in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire covering the Midlands, South West & London www.roblaceyphotographer.co.uk T: 01242 861118 M: 07802 542598

Three of Gloucestershire’s most exciting businesses revealed their unique business stories last night at Business & Innovation Magazine’s first Scale Up Live event, in front of around 50 invited guests.

Cleevely Electric Motors, SLG Brands and Commercial Group told their stories of ambition, hard work, heartache, opportunity and growth. Held at The Growth Hub in Gloucester and sponsored by Hazlewoods Accountants and BPE Solicitors.

Matt Cleevely set up Cleevely Electric Motors two years ago. The sister business of 55-year-old Cheltenham-based Cleevely Motors, it is focused on sales and service of the new generation of electric vehicles.

Lucy Beresford is the Chief Commercial Officer at SLG Brands, one of the UK’s fastest-growing beauty and male grooming brand companies. Born in Gloucester in 1985 where it manufactured niche make-up applicators and self-tanning mitts until 2018, SLG is now a global beauty brand company, with a wholly owned subsidiary in Shanghai, China. Recently the company bought three high street brands, Amie Naturally Kind Skincare, Johnny’s Chop Shop Grooming and COLAB Dry Shampoo as the company increases its portfolio of wholly-owned brand assets.

Arthur Hindmarch is Chairman of Commercial Group, a business services group, offering office supplies, IT services, managed print services and outsourced print as well as interiors, technologies and services for creative systems such as printers and copiers.

Each guest speaker was interviewed by Nicky Godding, Editor-in-Chief of Business & Innovation Magazine, who invited them to share how their businesses are scaling up and where the challenges lie. Following the interviews, Paul Fussell of Hazlewoods Accountants, Dale Williams from BPE Solicitors and Chris Gibb of The Growth Hub, along with the guest audience questioned the guest speakers kick-starting a room-wide debate and comment on the issues of scaling up a business and where the opportunities lie.

Nicky said: “It was an incredibly inspiring evening and our guest speakers were generous with their stories, revealing the successes of their businesses, and the challenges they face.

“The debate across the room, where our sponsors and audience questioned the guest speakers, the guest speakers questioned and commented on each-others stories, got everyone talking and sharing their knowledge, experience and ideas.”

You can read the full report on Scale Up Live in our January 2020 issue.

Nicky Godding

Nicky Godding is editor of The Business Magazine. Before her journalism career, she worked mainly in public relations moving into writing when she was invited to launch Retail Watch, a publication covering retail and real estate across Europe. After some years of constant travelling, she tucked away her passport and concentrated on business writing, co-founding a successful regional business magazine. She has interviewed some of the UK’s most successful entrepreneurs who have built multi-million-pound businesses and reported on many science and technology firsts. She reports on the region’s thriving business economy from start-ups, family businesses and multi-million-pound corporations, to the professionals that support their growth and the institutions that educate the next generation of business leaders.