A Little Furniture Shop meets Dragon Theo Paphitis

A Little Furniture Shop, @vintagechairs won the twitter Small Business Sunday back in September last year. This involves tweeting Theo something about your business on a Sunday between 5pm and 7.30pm. He chooses his six favourites every week, and re-tweets your message to his 300,000 followers. Over a thousand businesses enter every week so competition is high.

“I’d only entered for three weeks and won on my fourth week so was absolutely thrilled.” said Heather.

“The e-mails of more followers and congratulations continued throughout the week I’d won. Then about a month ago, it was announced there would be an SBS event for all past winners to get together and meet Theo. I headed off to Birmingham on Friday not knowing what to expect but winners had arrived from all over the UK. It was great to network and meet other winners, over 300 turned up.

“Theo appeared on stage after a great lunch and spoke about the need for small businesses and how he was once a small business himself. He took questions from the floor and I got the opportunity to ask him if he thought the high street was dead and was it possible to revive it?

“After three hours he then stood for another two hours so all the winners could have their photo taken with him. He even said to me the Dragons Den could do with some vintage chairs!

“Theo Paphitis was a revelation. He came through the room, happy to chat, and then took the stage. He was funny and interesting. What came across the most was his genuine enthusiasm for small businesses. He didn’t make daft promises; he knows he can’t put us all ‘on the map’ but quite simply he’s passed us each a ball… and now it’s up to us to pick it up and run with it.”