Monthly Archives: August 2020

Hot Business News Today

Looking for investment? Start obsessing about market need

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Originally written by Matthew Cushen on Small Business
What did you have for breakfast this morning? A Pepsi AM? A Cosmo yoghurt? Or a glass of juice fresh from your Juicero?
No, you didn’t. You could have — briefly — in 1990, 1999 and 2017. All are spectacular, financially disastrous and reputationally costly product fails. And we’ve only reached breakfast time.

One of the most misleading clichés around is that ‘there is no such thing as a bad idea’. Complete nonsense and tweak anyone on the nose that says it before they do more damage. The world is littered with bad ideas
They come from the big corporate world as brand extensions within category — such as Pepsi introducing a pointless new variant for which the consumer had no need. Or as responses to an internally generated strategy that has forgotten to understand consumers — such as Cosmopolitan’s logical attempt to move into health & nutrition products but with a product for which their brand had no real relevance in a hugely congested category.
However, corporates rarely bet the farm on one product extension — start-ups do.
The Juicero was a $400 machine that squeezed Juicero packets of diced fruits and vegetables. Presumably, the investors that

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Hot Business News Today

Bank of England eyes Working Capital Jobs Retention Scheme

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Originally written by Timothy Adler on Small Business
EXCLUSIVE: The Bank of England is eyeing payroll finance technology as a possible successor to the furlough scheme, which ends in October.
The coronavirus jobs retention scheme will cost the government £60bn in total but industry is braced for millions being made redundant when the scheme closes on October 31.
PwC estimates that without any extension one in five of those now on furlough will be made redundant. The Bank of England itself estimates that unemployment will almost double to 7.5 per cent by the end of the year, as things stand.
>See also: What do SMEs think is the best business bank account? – survey
Called the Working Capital Jobs Retention Scheme, the ground-breaking payroll technology is the brainchild of David Brown, fintech entrepreneur and chief executive of Hi55. The WCJRS would enable the banks to fund up at least £4,300 per employee risk free, throwing businesses another working capital lifebelt.
This is because EU law stipulates that all European governments must still cover payroll for a fixed period should their employer go bust. The Employment Rights Act has been law since 1996.
In the UK the government must step in and pay each employee £538 for each

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