GETTING YOUR BOOK PUBLISHED This month I’m excited to announce the launch of our new book, entitled How to Start a Creative Business: The jargon-free guide for creative entrepreneurs,by Doug Richard. In honour of this occasion, I thought i tmight be worth talking with our publisher, F&W; Media,about how you, too, can get your creative book ideas published,and what publishers...

British handbag designer Anya Hindmarch has been named Veuve Clicquot’s businesswoman of the year. Hindmarch, who cites Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher as her inspiration, saw off competition from City heavyweight Helena Morrissey, chief executive of Newton Investment Management. The 43-year-old designer said in an interview that Thatcher's Britain gave her the incentive to set up her own...

Doug Richard of School for Startups and Dragon's Den Fame guest writes for Startacus with some handy tips for Designers to beat the recession... 1. Sell your work at local events. That local market or pop up shop is your best chance to meet customers face to face, to show them your work, to find out why they buy when they buy and to see what they are selling. If the fees are too high, pair up...

LONDON — Gregory Thompson, president and C.E.O. — as well as chief cook, taster and marketing director — of Shakespeare’s Sauces, found his inspiration while walking to the British Library. Mr. Thompson, who had directed theater productions at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Britain and the Kennedy Center in Washington, was on his way to research “King John” and “thinking about...

Passion. Honesty. Hunger. Medeia Cohan is the Creative Director for the School of Creative Startups, an offshoot of Doug Richard's original School for Startups; borne with the mindset that entrepreneurship can be taught or at least nurtured... School for Startups as the name suggests, is just that - a school that teaches the business basics; so someone is taught to at least...

Mr Richard is planning a finance initiative that will provide both debt and equity to new creative businesses that have been through his School for Creative Startups initiative, a social enterprise that provides subsidised training for fledgling entrepreneurs. “Creative start-ups have been profoundly underserved by [early-stage investors],” Mr Richard said, citing a “huge preoccupation in...

Kate Upton landed a DirecTV commercial, which relies heavily on the old "sex sells" adage. [Jezebel] • Anthropologie debuted a new website, called Made in Kind, to showcase its designer collaborations. Eleven new collaborative lines will debut on April 5, including Karen Walker, Gregory Parkinson, John Patrick, and Samantha Pleet. [Fashionista] • Emily Blunt covers the new issue of British...

Veuve Clicquot has named British luxury bag designer Anya Hindmarch its business woman of the year, an annual accolade the champagne brand has been hosting since 1972 in tribute to founder Madame Clicquot. Hindmarch, whose bags have been carried by VIPs from Margaret Thatcher to Kate Middleton, won over Helena Morrissey, CEO of Newton Investment Management, and the River Cafe chef and owner...

Grab your pencil cases and moleskine notebooks, it’s time to head back to the classroom. But forget lunchboxes, cat’s cradle and BFFs, this new breed of superschool is very much for grown ups. First the fashion behemoth that is Vogue kicked it all off with the announcement of a 10-week Vogue Fashion Certificate and year-long Fashion Foundation Diploma at the new Condé Nast College of...

"Success to me has always been about attitude," said Kanya King, founder of the Mobo awards that brought urban music into the mainstream. "Research conducted at top universities has said it's not about education, it's not about money, it's really not about luck: the conclusion was that 15% of our success in life was due to ability and the rest of the 85% is due to having the right...

“A key difference between art college and S4CS is that at college, the coursework is academic and our results effect our grade, but the subject of S4CS is our own business and so successes have very real consequences.” “I thought the caliber of teaching I encountered at School for Creative Startups was wonderful.Working with people at the top of their industry was an invaluable...

The London-based School for Creative Startups has received a pledge of support from some of the UK’s most influential business owners, including Anya Hindmarch, NET-A-PORTER.COM founder Natalie Massenet and Time Out Chairman, Tony Elliott. The enterprise – founded by Dragon’s Den investor Doug Richard – helps give budding entrepreneurs a leg up in business through its year-long...

Thanks for stopping by, Holly, start by telling us a bit about what you do. I am an illustrator and designer, I create handcrafted illustrations, incorporating paper cuts and hand drawn elements to produce simple, quirky and iconic wall art, greeting cards and homeware. My illustrations feature my favourite things, so far London buildings, local maps, flowers and there are so...

I don't know if we can make spreadsheets and business plans fun, but I know we can make them tolerable and understandable. It's really about demystifying seemingly complex business systems and arming tomorrow's creative entrepreneurs with everything they need to become a sustainable and successful business. My role includes everything from building curricula with Doug to writing content for...

ANYA HINDMARCH and NET-A-PORTER.COM founder Natalie Massenet are pledging their support for rising entrepreneurs by partnering with the School for Creative Startups - a new project founded by Dragon's Den investor Doug Richard, aiding and educating promising businesspeople in the creative industries. Labelled an "MBA for creatives", workshops and surgeries on the year-long courses will be run in...

The prized Made in Britain label is currently under review, igniting fears that some of Britain's best-loved manufacturers may lose the coveted stamp of authenticity. European Union officials want the 'Made in' location to be based on the most expensive element in a product. That means handbags designed and made in England with Italian leather by Mulberry, for example, might have to be labelled...

What is the School for Creative Startups? The School for Creative Startups (S4CS) is a year long programme designed to teach creative people of any age or experience level how to make a living from their craft. We've built the programme on the idea that it's much easier (and a lot more fun) to teach creative people business skills than it is to teach business people to be...

Starting a business can be quite frightening. The failure rate is extremely high for new ventures. For the creative types, business terms and concepts seem like a foreign language. On top of that, there are countless friends and family offering conflicting advice - much of it often incorrect. If you are the creative type and want to start your own business, the most important thing to do is to...

We love to feature great start-ups and share with you insights on how they did it, to inspire you to maybe take action, too. So it’s no wonder that we had to learn more about the School for Creative Start-ups in London, a social enterprise dedicated to demystify the seemingly complex business system for creative people. The yearlong program aims to help aspiring...

Tina Crawford makes cushions and other things she thinks will make your house look nice. She studied jewellery design at Central Saint Martins, the prestigious London arts school. She graduated back in 1994 but after illness forced her to give up full-time work in television, she was compelled to go it alone and rely on her creative talents. Crawford, 40, turned to freehand embroidery, which...

With Britain said to be back in recession after four years of economic turmoil, it’s time we had a creative rethink. A lot has been said about the need for an enterprise-led recovery – and you will find no greater champion of entrepreneurship than me. Small and young businesses are the backbone of our economy, the proven wealth creators who hold our nation’s fate in their hands. But...

WITH Britain said to be back in recession after four years of economic turmoil, it’s time we had a creative rethink. A lot has been said about the need for an enterprise-led recovery – and you will find no greater champion of entrepreneurship than me. Small and young businesses are the backbone of our economy, the proven wealth creators who hold our nation’s fate in their hands. But...

Whether it’s Barney from How I Met Your Mother shooting fireballs to get a girls number, or ‘Dynamo’ pulling a Jesus and walking across the Thames, magic is back! And in a big way. In fact it’s almost impossible these days to take a left turn in Soho without someone turning your white handkerchief into a dove. It seems curls may get the girls, but magic gets the matured maiden. For...

Medeia Cohan is Programme Director at School for Creative Startups, “I “Twenty years later, not too much has changed. I don’t need kissing advice anymore but my relationship with my sister is still very important to me. The big difference now is that I also seek advice from people outside my immediate family; I now look to a mentor for professional guidance. Over the years, I have had...

HOLLY TUCKER Co-founder of notonthehighstreet.com, Holly Tucker, was searching for a mentor who shared her vision for the company. In NOTHS board member Mark Esiri, she found support and encouragement, as well as invaluable advice from someone with a very different, but complementary, set of skills to her own. Holly recommends that you: “Define what type of help you’re...

Business and Enterprise Minister Mark Prisk is today leading the call for more organisations to sign up to the Mentorsme portal and join the national mentoring network. Over 100 mentoring organisations are already part of the initiative - more than double the number available when the service was first launched in July 2011. The Minister will today be holding a workshop with up to 60 of the...

Creativity and business don’t mix, right? Wrong. There’s absolutely no reason why creatives can’t become a financial and commercial success - and the School for Creative Startups is one way of turnng your brilliant idea into a business that makes you money. Founded by former Dragon’s Den investor, serial entrepreneur and financial force of nature Doug Richard, the school takes creatives...

School For Creative Startups 26 | Craftseller Nancy Foulton looks at overcoming hurdles and setbacks when running a successful creative startup “There is always a way to get something done – you just have to think creatively” New business owners often feel like every hurdle and setback they endure is yet another sign that they shouldn’t be running a business at all. The truth is...

The London School for Creative Start-ups teaches aspiring entrepreneurs in the creative sector all they need to know by giving them just core facts. The yearlong program - named “MBA for creatives” by the British Vogue – offers a series of tailor-made, very hands-on workshops free from acronyms and theory on how to successfully start and run a business. Besides its unique method to...

School for Creative Startups is a unique social enterprise established by serial entrepreneur and former Dragons' Den investor Doug Richard in 2011. I found that universities weren't doing much in the way of teaching professional development to creatives and they were going out into the world without the training they needed to make a living from what they did. When Doug Richard convinced me...

IT is no fluke that Britain’s young, creative businesses are concentrated in London. Two out of three international advertising agencies have their European headquarters in the capital. It is the home of one of the largest film centres in the world, some of the largest and most important fashion schools, design schools, stage schools and post-production centres, not to mention the growing...

Anyone who has been through a divorce knows that more often than not it is a pretty stressful process. One person who knows just that is Sally Beerworth. Sally used to work at Saatchi and Saatchi and started her own business whilst she was going through her divorce. Her legal fees were huge, and the divorce also had an immensely personal effect on her too with the result that she had to spend...

Medeia Cohan of School for Creative Startups reveals how a creative mentor can fast-track your business to success. Click here for full article...

Ten years ago, urban theorist Richard Florida popularized the idea that creative people are linked to economic growth in his book The Rise of the Creative Class. As his theory goes, cities with high concentrations of creatives – designers, musicians, tech workers, artists, and so on – tend to experience higher levels of economic development. But it’s not necessarily the creatives...

School for Creative Startups announces a new partnership with a network of the UK’s leading creative entrepreneurs, including: Anya Hindmarch Natalie Massenet (Net-a-Porter) Oliver Peyton (Founder of Peyton & Byrne Ltd.) Tony Elliott (Chairman, Time Out) Luke Johnson (Entrepreneur) Brian Message (ATC Management, Manager Radiohead) Lynne Franks (Lynne Franks PR) The line-up of...