Theo Paphitis SBS Winners
Theo Paphitis, Chairman of Ryman and more famously known for being a Dragon on the BBC 2 show Dragons Den, runs a weekly competition on Twitter every Sunday called Small Business Sunday. He bases this on his experiences of starting his own small businesses. He used the Sunday evening to plan his week so that he always hit the ground running on a Monday morning. To enter the competition you have to write to Theo Paphitis on Twitter between 5pm and 7.30pm including the #SBS hashtag. Tell him about your business in 140 characters. Theo then chooses 6 businesses which he re-tweets to his 384,000 plus followers. On Sunday 4th March 2012 we wrote to Theo and told him about Penrose Products and what we stand for:
@TheoPaphitis We are a UK Manufacturer of Natural Fibre Bedding, helping people sleep well in National Sleep Awareness Week #SBS #40winks
— Penrose Alpaca (@PenroseProducts) March 4, 2012
From this, we found out at 8pm that we were one of the lucky 6 to be chosen. All of a sudden my iPhone and iPad started to go crazy with congratulations and our Twitter profile was also gaining followers by the minute. The impact was immediate. We had over 100 extra followers in the first hour and was getting alot of congratulatory tweets from past SBS winners, along with many others. We were invited to the 2012 SBS Event at Edgbaston Cricket Ground where Theo had organised the first SBS winners event.
Theo was extremely generous with a lengthy question and answer session and also to announced the SBS winners website, which we were all to be part of. We would highly recommend you have a go at this. We won on our third attempt, so don't be disappointed if you don't win first time around. Start to read what other people say and do as there is always a reason why these people were picked; they said something that caught Theo's imagination.