Director Craig Smith Shortlisted For Great British Entrepreneur Awards
We received some very exciting news recently – Craig Smith, our founder and Director, has been shortlisted for the Small Business Entrepreneur of the Year category in the 2019 Great British Entrepreneur Awards for the North East region!
The Great British Entrepreneur Awards were founded in 2013, and aim to acknowledge the hard work and inspiring stories of entrepreneurs and businesses in the UK. They celebrate stories that have taken entrepreneurs to where they are today, regardless of size or turnover. The awards stand out from other similar programmes in that they focus on being more than just an ‘awards ceremony’, and try to build a community for winners and finalists to use to connect and showcase their businesses all year round.
Some of the entrepreneurs that have been celebrated in the awards have gone on to become immensely successful, with their businesses becoming household names and reaching the mass market. These include James Watt from BrewDog, Shaun Pulfrey from Tangle Teezer, and Hannah & Sophie Pycroft from makeup brand Spectrum Collections.
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This year the awards are being held in eight regions across the UK. There are fourteen categories which entrepreneurs and businesses have been shortlisted for in each region, and the winners for each will be announced in the regional finals later this year. Those winners will then go on to form a new shortlist and have a chance at winning the national awards, the ceremony for which will be in London in November.
After 12 years in business and hitting the million pound milestone in revenue, Craig has steered The Printed Bag Shop through ups and downs and into a strong period of growth in recent years. Winning a number of awards (see them here) back when the business was first getting off the ground, this inclusion in the shortlist for Natwest’s Great British Entrepreneur Awards is a fantastic achievement for Craig both personally and professionally.
Speaking about this achievement, Craig said “I was quite surprised but really excited to see that I’d made the shortlist for these awards. We’ve seen such fantastic growth in the business over the past couple of years and it’s great to have some recognition for that.
“I’m really looking forward to the regional finals, and hopefully we can even make it to the national ones too.”
We’ve got our fingers crossed that Craig can take the title! Follow us on social media to keep up with our latest company news and find out the results of the awards later in the year.