ESSEX Business Owner, Inspiring Business Adaptation Journey.

Matthew Court, Essex Business Owner and NOVO AWARD’s winner, who runs Bookmarks is one of the most top innovative companies in Essex.  Matthew shares his inspiring business story of pivoting with our Essex business community.

Matthew’s Story:

For better or worse (mostly worse ha ha) I’m not one to follow trends; I’m just not cool enough, so I tried to avoid the word ‘pivot’ as much as possible when it became trendy to say you were ‘pivoting’ your career or business back at the start of the pandemic.

But as much as I grew to despise the word it’s something, I as a small business owner, and my business mbcg (an Out of Home advertising company) was forced in to as the pandemic took hold.

Why the pivot? Well, mainly because I run a firm where the main part of the business was rolling out a brand-new network of hybrid digital advertising & signage screens inside pubs.  It was not the best timing in the world, when everyone was being told to stay at home, and even worse when you remember that when the most stringent lockdown measures were lifted, people still weren’t able to visit pubs. The hospitality sector was hit incredibly hard by the pandemic, and is still feeling its brutal effects, so I am grateful my business was able to get through it.

I am incredibly lucky that we were able to trade through that first six-month period, where none of us really knew what was going on (through the small network of post office screens we have the advertising sales contract for). I count myself even more incredibly lucky, I fumbled my way to an idea, which down the line has turned in to something successful.

My business, Bookshop Screens, is the first screen network of its kind in the world, where shops get the screens for free in return for letting us put advertising messages from relevant advertisers on a small proportion of the airtime. It’s unique in that the shop gets an ad-funded digital signage system & content creation and management service.  The advertiser gets to put their messages in front of their perfect target audience, customers of independent bookshops. So far things are going very well with a small national network of some 25 shops, and in December we’ll start taking new shops on and grow at 5-15 shop per month.

So, much as I don’t like the P-word (Pivot, not Pubs – I’ve always liked Pubs), it’s felt good to be recognised (along with the 31 other winners) as one of the most innovative, adaptable and ‘pivotable’ in Essex.

Here’s to Pivoting, it’s not as bad as I thought after all 🙂

Cheers Matt,

Check out Bookmarks website at  www.bookshopscreens.com

For info on Best Growth Hub’s, free business support programme in pivoting and other FREE business support programmes available.  Please call our business support team on 03330 348 998 or email info@bestgrowthhub.org.uk