Pitching hour: Big opportunities for small businesses

Adobe started over 40 years ago in a garage in California and, thanks to the creativity of our founders and people, a number of milestones have helped it grow into the business it is today – from the arrival of Photoshop, which is now used by over 90 percent of the world’s creative professionals, to the recent launch of Adobe Express, developed to support small businesses who want to build standout content that helps grow their passion, brand and business.

This is where our partnership with Enterprise Nation comes in. We care about creating opportunities that matter, and ‘Small Business Goes Big’ is rooted in one simple mission – to give small businesses, big opportunities. Last year, for example, hundreds of founders entered our competition to make an advert for their brands with no design experience needed. Ten winners had their ads shown to over 10 million people on 100 digital screens across the UK.

Yet, within the small business community, there are so many inspiring voices with the potential to embark on their own journeys of evolution and growth.

With that in mind, we most recently challenged budding entrepreneurs to create a short pitch video about their business or product using Adobe Express. We saw hundreds of incredible entries across five categories - Beauty and Cosmetics, Fashion and Jewlery, Food & Drink, Health & Wellbeing and Homewares. Five winners then took to the stage at the StartUp Show, to pitch to our panel made up of some of the biggest retail buying teams in the UK, for the chance to win a share of £10,000 and be stocked in stores.

Watch the pitch videos of those five fantastic winners:

Julian Boaitey, Yendy Skin

With Yendy, Julian bridges the gap between the farmers who make the raw ingredients and the beauty trade that needs them. They work with small-scale female farmers in Africa to give them the power they need to receive both fair treatment and fair pay.

Lucy Harris, NETU Clothing Ltd

Lucy, Molly and Rosie Harris realised that if they and their teammates had trained smarter, not harder, they’d be injured less and better athletes. So, they started NETU to help train netball players to be at their peak fitness and to launch a female-specific, sustainable range of sportswear.

Lauren O’Donnell, Oatsu

Lauren started Oatsu in 2020 and has since sold thousands of overnight oats to her customers throughout the UK. Her expertise and hard work ensures people can enjoy a healthy, simple breakfast that keeps them going all morning.

Kira Goode, Cup Squared

Kira launched Cup Squared to promote a reusable alternative to many of the menstrual products available. Their portable menstrual cup cleaner reduces plastic waste and gives women more options on how they look after their bodies.

Jonny Cottom, Breakbottle

Jonathan noticed that most reusable bottles are hard to clean. A simple but frustrating barrier to helping people adopt them and use less plastic waste. So he created Breakbottle, an easy-to-clean water bottle that smashed their 2021 Kickstarter campaign.

A huge congratulations to all our winners. Along with Enterprise Nation, we can’t wait to see your companies continue with pace and purpose.

Finally, if you own a small business, the Adobe Brand Builder from Enterprise Nation is a content hub full of training and resources. From case studies to one-to-one expert advice and much more, it offers dedicated support on how to make your business stand out – by creating visual content to better share your mission, connect with your community and, ultimately, expand the impact of your business in the most creative ways possible.