Home Business Report 2008 – spare room startups confident in face of crunch

Despite the credit crunch and worsening economic news, Britain’s home businesses, dubbed the spare room startups, are positive about the future, according to the Home Business Report published today as part of Small Business Week.

The report compiled by Enterprise Nation and supported by BT also found that businesses started from home now account for 2.5 million of the 4.6 million UK SMEs.

This figure reflects a 16% rise in home-based business start-ups in 2008 compared to the year before.

In the face of recession, these businesses may be more positive than many with 72% planning to win new customers, 66% planning to increase turnover and 58% saying they’d be introducing new products and/or services.

The survey of 1,060 home business owners was conducted between 20 August and 12 September, so the vicissitudes of the banking collapse and bail out won’t have been issues in terms of outlook.

Nevertheless, one suspects home-based businesses feel more positive and secure than many in the corporate world right now.

Emma Jones on the Home Business Report 2008

The other interesting highlight of the report is the fact that many spare room start-ups are actually working when they get home from full time jobs.  This is creating a 5pm – 9am economy.

Motivation for these kitchen table entrepreneurs is the familiar desire to be their own boss (33%) and search for greater work life balance (24%), although all those 5pm-9am workers may find the reality of balancing work and life a little harder to achieve.

Emma Jones, founder of Enterprise Nation, said:

More home business means more dynamism in the economy, less traffic on the roads and tighter social cohesion as parents stay home to run a business and the household.