Building a B Corp: Inside the latest venture of a serial entrepreneur
Building a B Corp: Inside the latest venture of a serial entrepreneur
This could be a story about a family firm, about a wife and husband working together, an ethical business, a serial entrepreneur, B Corp, a zest for life, a vision. And it is. It’s all those things.
Dear Readers,
Welcome to our first edition of The Raikes Journal this week. Our apologies for those expecting to read this yesterday (we usually send on a Monday. An invitation to a rather special event we will be writing about shortly got in the way!).
One of the beauties of Raikes, or at least we think so anyway, is that we don’t just recycle some press releases for you - we can get under the skin of businesses and stories like no other publication.
Today is a big read that resulted from an interview we did with a well-known face of the Gloucestershire business community. What started as a quick chat about her latest venture ended up becoming a deep dive into just how and why she started another business, why it’s B Corp and how that all works.
We’ve tried to get a bit of insight into the story too from people outside of the company - not least a B Corp expert and a legal expert - in the hope it helps other business people ondering the route, but also to give the rest of us mere mortals a better understanding too.
The story on Friday came from a chance conversation about an ice cream salesman who was about to pitch up in King’s Square, Gloucester, with 120 litres of freshly made vegan ice cream. The city, he said, was changing for the better and that led to other conversations about the square beginning to become the centre of a new cultural hub for Gloucester. A city on the move. You can read that here.
If you want to help us continue to write about Gloucestershire, to deliver editorially-led news and insight, challenge authority where needed, and use the views and opinions of our contacts to provide all of the above, please do sign up to support us as a paying subscriber.
You can sign up for just £2.30 a week - or £1.80 a week if two or more people sign up at once. More details are below, along with the main story.
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Your weekly charity feature
🔥 🍺 There have been two big announcements from Gloucester Brewery this week already. First came the news via the ever popular social media channel LinkedIn that the brewery was teaming up with Elmrep, the Gloucester-based copier, printer and scanner business, to stage what it is calling Brew and Bravery Firewalk. This is a challenge to anyone who thinks they have the courage to walk over hot coals for charity to step foward - literally onto hot coals - and raise money for The Chamwell Centre, the Hollie Gazzard Trust, Gloucestershire Rape and Sexual Abuse Centre, Goals Beyond Grassand Linc Charity. You can find out more here. The second piece of news was that Geoff Smith, the brewery’s MD, will be stepping down. An advert has gone out for a replacement already. You can read more on that here.
Your briefing notes...
🍴 🍹 😋 Festival-lovers in Cheltenham will know about the Food and Drink Festival, staged in June, but perhaps not about the town’s Food and Drink Week - a seven-day celebration of the best the town has to offer, staged from 16 to 22 September 2024 and hosted by Cheltenham BID and Visit Cheltenham. An official launch party for VIPs is due to take place yesterday evening (2 September) at Gallimores Kitchen and Sam’s Montpellier, both restaurants to be found in Montpellier Courtyard in the town. You can find our more about the Food and Drink week here. We were lucky enough to be invited along to the launch party and will be writing up our thoughts later this week.
💚 A large part of our main article below is about B Corp, but before we get to that - here’s a piece about possibly the very latest Gloucestershire firm to achieve the sought after accreditation - Stroud-based Clear Future Financial Planners. According to its press release, it’s the first financial planning company in the county to receive the global certification that sees it join 2,000 other UK companies and 8,000 worldwide who ar all also combining ethics with running a successful business. We’ll put the full release into our PR Wire channel shortly.
🤝 The Forest Economic Partnership is due to host its quarterly stakeholder meeting at The Wesley in Cinderford on Wednesday next week (11 September). This is a chance for the district’s business community to gather, hear the partnership’s latest news, receive updates from its various project work and hear from its inspiring members. It’s an opportunity to network, build community and discuss the latest economic trends and innovations. And it’s open to everyone. Speakers at the event will include Luke Freeman, join chief executive of MF Freeman, Hayley Welway, ceo of Two Rivers Housing, Natalie King, MD of AccXel Construction School. You can book tickets here.
📰 Willans LLP, the Cheltenham law firm and one of the Founding Partners of this very digital magazine, has issued its latest insights and updates for businesses. This most recent edition covers off subjects as diverse as how farmers and landowners can diversify their income streams, share buybacks, detail on the Tipping Act, which is due to be introduced later this year, the Renters’ Rights Bill (is it the end of the current housing regime as we know it?), updates to stamp duty land tax, new rules ref TUPE and how a family investment company can help you pass on wealth to your children. You can read it here.
👷🏼 👷🏽♀️ There is less than a week to go before the great and good of the county’s construction sector are set to gather for their high summit. This is Constructing Excellence Gloucestershire’s annual conference at the University of Gloucestershire’s Business School at Oxtalls Campus, University of Gloucestershire. Panel topics will include new Government policy, early contractor engagement and social value. More than 150 are expected to attend to hear what has to be said and for the valuable networking opportunities. Due to take place from 2pm to 5pm on Thursday 5 September. Entry is free. You can book tickets here.
* Everything you read on The Raikes Journal is made possible by our incredible Founding Partners: QuoLux, Willans LLP, Gloucestershire College, Merrell People and Randall & Payne, our sponsors Hartpury University and Hartpury College, our Founding Members and wonderful paying subscribers.
If you upgrade to paid, you’ll be part of this community interest company too. In an era when local journalism is all but gone, we are dedicated to delivering quality journalism for Gloucestershire, to championing the county, in particular its businesses, charities, education and training providers, to defending it, challenging those who need to be held to account and to helping create an even stronger community. If you upgrade to paid you will be able to see past the paywalls on our second and third email editions of the week, that lock all our archive after two weeks and lock our rolling Top 100 Businesses in Gloucestershire, the series that follows the financial fortunes of our biggest firms by turnover. You will be able to comment on our stories too. You’ll be helping make this CIC sustainable. Please do join us.
You can sign up for just £2.30 a week - or £1.80 a week if two or more people sign up at once.
Building a B Corp: Inside the latest venture of a serial entrepreneur
This could be a story about a family firm, about a wife and husband working together, an ethical business, a serial entrepreneur, B Corp, a zest for life, a vision. And it is. It’s all those things.
By Andrew Merrell.
To know where to start with this story was the hardest part. Should we concentrate on the B Corp/ethical business angle, or introduce it as the latest chapter in the remarkable story of Cheltenham businesswoman Angie Petkovic?
That she is the brains behind Beechurst Serviced Apartments is no secret, neither is it that the business was the first of its kind in the UK to receive B Corp status, given to firms that take their ethical and environmental responsibilities seriously.
So the article was definitely a golden opportunity to explore just how much thought and effort needs to go into a business to convince B Lab, the B Corp awarding body, it is a worthy recipient.
But we were also left with the impression the story of Beechurst also spoke volumes for the kind of person Petkovic is - one of those fascinating people unable to resist writing yet another chapter into an already colourful and full career.
She could quite easily have rested on her laurels as the founder of one of Gloucestershire’s most successful PR and marketing firms, APT Marketing - and having been one of the businesspeople who made local enterprise partnership GFirst LEP so effective during its 12-year lifespan. And that’s just part of her CV.
But no. So while others might have looked at the grand red-bricked Victorian former farm house in which she and husband Steve brought up their family and saw downsizing as the only option, she saw opportunity.
Which is why, four years later, as well as running APT with her daughter, Victoria Petkovic-Short, she is also running a new business – the aforementioned Beechurst Service Apartments; five tastefully decorated, well-equipped individual apartments resulting from the coversion of the front part of the property.
She smiles when I ask her why?
“At my age, do you mean?”, she says, jokingly, before considering the real gist of the question – which was that, just perhaps, she is unable to resist a business opportunity!
“It gave us a good reason to keep the house. We had some great times here and some very happy memories and we still love living here. We just don’t need such a big house any more,” she said.
The house was so spacious that even with the five apartments there is still ample living room to the rear for the couple.
As with all busy business people, she seems able to flex time to accommodate so much more. It was Petkovic that liaised with architects and project-managed the construction work – a £40,000 investment and an estimated £30,000-plus of man-hours that went into the transformation too.
And B Corp; why add another layer of difficulty into the mix?
“We have always thought like a B Corp anyway with everything we do. Why not try and make it official,” she said.
One or two big hotels may have got their accreditation from B Lab before it, but Beechurst became the first serviced apartments business in the UK to meet the standard.
Camilla Barns, who runs Better Business, Better World, and the B Corp group B Local Gloucestershire, explained the motivation for a business goes much, much deeper than the marketing value.
“Here’s the thing: B Corps outperform their non-B Corp peers across the board.
“Think faster revenue growth, sky-high expectations for the future, unrivalled employee retention and diversity, a culture of innovation, rock-solid governance, and an unwavering dedication to community impact,” she said, adding that investors like it too.
But it is not an easy road.
“There is no hiding in the impact assessment; the questions really interrogate into the depths of every aspect of the business.
“If you pass the score threshold to become B Corp certified, you know the business takes social and environmental responsibility seriously,” said Barns.
Beechhurst excelled in that assessment securing an overall score of 89 against a certified average of 81 and an uncertified average of less than 50.
And it stood out in other areas too. A submission to judges when Beechhurst was entered into the Service Apartment Awards and The Shortyz (Short Term Rentalz Awards) stated: “Not only do we put the guest experience at the heart of what we do, but during our successful B Corp Certification, there is a section of criteria dedicated to guest experience, for which we secured the highest possible mark available from the B Corp certification process.”
Recent Google reviews have the Cheltenham business scoring 4.9 out of five on average with comments from guests in the last six weeks including ‘superb’, ‘good value for money’, ‘exceptional’ and ‘comfortable and clean’.
Those guests have ranged from couples and individuals wanting short stay accomodation in order to explore Cheltenham, to enjoy its festivals and restaurants, or to explore the county generally, to those who are here for work, on contracts connected to the nearby airport, cyber sector or construction. The property is just two minutes from the M5 Junction 11 and GCHQ.
Timing for the launch of the business was also good.
Something about the pandemic was propelling ESG (environmental, social and governance) investing to new heights with everything from traditional equity firms to plcs eager to get their portfolios of businesses certified.
When Beechhurst was being born, apartment by apartment over a two-year period, the likes of ProCook in Gloucestershire achieved B Corp status too – the high profile Gloucester-based plc having enough resource to throw at the challenge and the publicity only helping spread the word about B Corp even wider.
In 2021, when Beechhurst Services Apartments first began to opened there were 564 certified B Corps in UK. By the end of 2022 there were 1,000.
Today, the B Corp movement remains on the rise with 8,000 businesses globally and now 1,900-plus in the UK. In addition, a reported 240,000-plus businesses are using the B Corp framework to create measurable ESG strategies and manage their impact.
A word of warning for those who think it is simply a certificate to hang in your window.
Helen Howes, a lawyer in the corporate and commercial at Cheltenham-headquartered Willans Solicitors, said: “When considering the benefits of B Corp status, we urge our clients to be mindful that it is more than just an accreditation scheme or obtaining a certificate.
“Depending on the business’s current practices, it may have the result of fundamentally changing how the directors make decisions.
“B Corp status companies are required to incorporate specified wording into their articles of association (their constitution) which will necessitate directors to place equal value on the impact of their decisions on their workforce, customers, suppliers, environment and society as a whole as they do to the financial impacts of any decision they make.
“As such, the interests of the business’s shareholders (and making a profit for them) will essentially be diluted as profit will no longer be able to be the primary driver behind key business decisions.
“Good practice would also be for all board meetings to be fully-minuted going forward in to demonstrate this is being carried out.”
Howes said it was also important to ensure that the required amendment to the business’s articles of association was done properly and in line with the Companies Act 2006.
“It may not be as simple a task as simply inserting the new wording; thought will need to be given as to whether the new wording conflicts with any of the existing provisions in the articles and any shareholders’ agreement that is in place,” she said.
And if you think once you’ve done this and achieved B Corp you can relax, think again. Your business has to live by the ‘people, planet, profit’ mantra - and B Lab will be watching.
It recently publicly stripped the accreditation from Havas London, Havas Lemz (Amsterdam), Havas New York, and Havas Immerse for working with fossil fuel giant Shell. Each of them multi-million pound turnover companies.
For some customers, said Petkovic, the recycling, the attention to detail around energy consumption, the solar panels, the planet-friendly toiletries, probably doesn’t register – but for many others it really does.
“An increasing number of customers are looking for somewhere that they feel happy, safe and secure first, but somewhere they also know is carbon conscious.
“And even if they are not, the company they are working for that is paying the bill increasingly like to know where and how their money is being spent,” said Petkovic, who has form in the hospitality sector pre-APT Marketing.
“We ran a boutique hotel way back,” she said, referring to the Cheltenham business she and her husband, Steve, managed when they first moved to the town.
Before that she worked in London running marketing departments in big blue-chip organisations, such as Hewlett Packard (HP) - experience that sowed the seeds for APT.
It is Steve who gives me a tour of Beechurst, pointing out the detail, the roomy, spotless showers, the cooking facilities, special air conditioning units, and explained how the house was reconfigured to get such spacious rooms.
There are Air Steril units in each room, technology that kills 99.9 per cent of known bacteria and viruses and maximises - a legacy of the pandemic and one which guests seem to like, so it’s stayed. As has the obsession with cleanliness that extends to new toiletries for all guests.
As we peep inside the rooms Steve neglects to come clean about his own entrepreneurial addiction.
Not only did he run the boutique hotel with Angie, and is now helping to oversee running of the latest addition to the family portfolio.
He still runs The Bicycle Hub, which offers offers quality bike hire, servicing and secure bike storage in Cheltenham, and also manages Compass Holidays, which specialises in walking, cycling and other activity holidays in the UK, Europe and Worldwide.
Plans are ongoing for Beechurst. There are already solar panels and but the couple are looking to install additional solar battery power and EV charging.
According to Petkovic the industry standard for carbon emissions for an overnight stay is 14.3kgCO2e, but Beechurst delivers just 6.35kgCO2e, partly due to it removing gas supply from the property, opting for self-generation of energy and complementary renewable sources, improving energy efficiency and insulation plus the full recycling facilities and thermostatically controlled-heating.
In a statement from its aforementioned award entries it backed up what Barns said earlier: “Commercially, we are reaping the rewards of a sustainability-first approach, both top-line and bottom-line.
“Our standards have enabled us to join the RFQ (request for quote) frameworks of several major local employers, as well as being spotlighted on major booking search engines such as booking.com as a sustainable travel operator.
“This has contributed to average occupancy of 88 per cent over the last six months, against a local average of 64 per cent.
“Furthermore, our approach has provided additional security during the energy crisis, with limited inflationary impact on our overheads.”
The aim is to half its CO2 again by the time this year (2024) is over and to seek more accurate information from its suppliers and clients to ensure when it comes before B Lab for its next assessment, it scores even better than before.