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

Anna SlothMove Piers Linney

Sheffield business owner Anna Page has redesigned and rebranded her business after winning a masterclass from former Dragon’s Den judge, Piers Linney.

Alongside her career as an engineer, Anna started SlothMove after noticing a gap in the market for a one stop shop switching service for people when they move home.

SlothMove won British Business Bank’s annual Small Business Advice Week mentoring competition. The prize included 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.

He offered her advice on how to streamline her offer and make best use of the partnerships she has with companies such as Octopus Energy, Iceland, nPower and SSE.

Anna Page, Founder of SlothMove, said: “Meeting Piers was fantastic. He offered practical, non-nonsense advice. Initially we were targeting anyone moving home. We’ve taken a step back to really understand who we’re targeting and how best to cater to that audience to provide the most value. Piers’ advice on understanding your customer and data-driven strategy was really helpful”

“Since meeting with Piers, we have redesigned and rebranded our services to align with our target market, and we’ve refocussed the business plan.”

Piers Linney, Non-Executive Director at British Business Bank, said: “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.

“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.”

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 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.