Starting a Small Business
A Changing World
Globalisation - this word became well known in the mid nineties. At the time, some people had made predictions about the growth of China. Most of these forecasts were that China would overtake every country except USA over a period of 10 years.
They were pretty-much accurate. Other rapidly growing countries (economically) are Brazil, Russia and India. These, together with China are often referred to as the BRICs. These economies will have an impact on nearly everything that happens in economic life. It is reasonable for small businesses to ask themselves how this shift in economic power will effect them.
Firstly, on a positive side, the number of tourists and business visits from these counties is growing at a very significant rate. Hotels and similar industries will need to recognise this as a very significant growth prospect. Perhaps having a page on the website translated into Mandarin and Russian would be a good idea. This may not be very costly.
Food outlets in popular tourist areas would be well advised to tune into the tastes of some of these countries. It is very noticeable in London that a very high proportion of those who are eating in noodle-bars or sushi places are of oriental origin. And of course, the British taste is always broadening for oriental textures and flavours.
Export
Export to these emerging economies is another highly important factor. Whilst the vast majority of the population in these boom markets are very low paid workers, there have become a very wealthy small percentage (yet a small percent of a vast population is still a big number) who are buying luxury branded products imported from France, Germany, Italy etc.
An interesting thing I noticed a while ago, if you are looking to see which ways a market (consumer behaviour) is going, is to go to Oxford during term-time of the University. The students are from all over the world and will tend to be very much the avant-garde of any consumer taste.
I recall being in Oxford in the late nineties and being stunned as to the number of people carrying large cartons of drinks. They would be any variety of smoothies, blended fruits, chilled coffees and suchlike. These students, particularly the international students were the fore-runners of now what any UK town would be like. It is obviously now such a common sight (to see people slurping these drinks from large containers) that you probably wouldn't be noticing them any more.
Fashion
In fashion too, in places like Oxford you will see the next wave of fashions. The most recent phenomenon is the Tokyo street-wear look which again the International students were wearing say 5 years ago, and has now become the de-rigeur taste for generation Y in the UK. Ironically, the hottest UK brand (at the moment) is Superdry, recently floated on the UK stock-market, which is often using the Tokyo street-wear logos, made-up sports teams and suchlike (e.g. Osaka 6) to 'buy into' that image.
The double irony is that, with the likes of David Beckham wearing the Superdry brand, the sales of this fashion range is going very well in Japan. The world is getting more and more global and those who understand what's going on are the ones who will have the most viable businesses.
However influential generations X and Y are on the overall direction of consumer behaviour, there is a different generation that really holds the purse strings in the UK; the baby boomer generation. There is a whole separate chapter on this generation.