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Sheffield firm SlothMove wins mentoring session with former ‘dragon’ Piers Linney

Press release 15 January 2020

SlothMove, a small business providing a hassle-free online change of address service, has won British Business Bank’s annual ;Small Business Advice Week ;mentoring competition. The prize includes half a day’s business consultancy with former Dragons’ Den investor and entrepreneur, Piers Linney, who is also a Non-Executive Director of British Business Bank.

SlothMove lets users update their address with TV Licensing, loyalty programmes and all their utility companies in one go by filling in a simple online form. Based in Sheffield, the company has been up and running for eight months, helping house-moving Britons save time and money. The founder entered the ;Small Business Advice Week ;competition run by the Bank in September 2019.

Piers Linney visited SlothMove in Sheffield to learn more about the young business and provide them with mentoring and advice.

Like millions of Britons every year, my last home move was unnecessarily stressful and busy. I spent hours on the phone to companies updating my address and hours searching for the best deal. I knew there had to be a better way. SlothMove is a new online change of address service which can save you hours of time and hundreds of pounds worth of money. Meeting Piers was fantastic. He offered practical, no-nonsense advice. One of the key things I have taken away is how to really build our brand and understand the customer. We have a lot of information and a lot to build on for the future. Anna Page Founder of SlothMove
These days most new businesses, especially small ones, are digital. Like many others, the question for SlothMove is how they build on the valuable feedback they have received from customers to grow and monetise the service they provide. An important consideration is how they go about building their brand. Customers today want to know who you are and the back story of your business. For SlothMove, it’s about putting that together, finding the product market fit and, assuming they can do that, how they can scale their business.” As is always the case with any business, it is all about understanding the target customer and the problems that Sloth Move can solve for them – to simplify the process of moving – so that they come back and recommend the service. It’s about the relationship with the customer in that moment and how SlothMove can add the most value for them. When they’re ready to grow, SlothMove, and any other business looking to scale up will need access to finance and business support – the challenge is knowing where to look. Getting reliable, independent information on your finance options can make the difference between success and failure. The Bank has developed its Finance Hub as a source of independent and impartial information on the finance options available for growing businesses. Piers Linney Non-Executive Director at British Business Bank

The British Business Bank is the UK government’s economic development bank. Established in November 2014, its mission is to make finance markets for smaller businesses work more effectively, enabling those businesses to prosper, grow and build UK economic activity.

As part of the its commitment to enabling small businesses to understand and explore the finance options available to them, the Bank developed the Finance Hub. It provides independent and impartial information for growing businesses and offers guidance for scale-up, high growth and potential high growth businesses using interactive content.

Further Information

Notes to editors

About the British Business Bank

The British Business Bank is the UK government’s economic development bank. Established in November 2014, its mission is to make finance markets for smaller businesses work more effectively, enabling those businesses to prosper, grow and build UK economic activity. Its remit is to design, deliver and efficiently manage UK-wide smaller business access to finance programmes for the UK government.

The British Business Bank programmes are supporting more than £7.0bn of finance to over 91,000 smaller businesses (as at end of June 2019).

As well as increasing both supply and diversity of finance for UK smaller businesses through its programmes, the Bank works to raise awareness of the finance options available to smaller businesses:

The new British Business Bank Finance Hub provides independent and impartial information to high-growth businesses about their finance options, featuring short films, expert guides, checklists and articles from finance providers to help make their application a success. The new site also features case studies and learnings from real businesses to guide businesses through the process of applying for growth finance.

As the holding company of the group operating under the trading name of British Business Bank, British Business Bank plc is wholly owned by HM Government and is not authorised or regulated by the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) or the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). The British Business Bank operates under its own brand name through a number of subsidiaries, none of which are authorised and regulated by the FCA.

British Business Bank plc and its principal operating subsidiaries are not banking institutions and do not operate as such. A complete legal structure chart for British Business Bank plc and its subsidiaries can be found on the British Business Bank plc website.

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