The next few months promise to be an exciting time for businesses. Today, with lockdown easing, town centres are full of people hoping to revisit their old haunts. Queues have appeared up and down the country outside shops, hairdressers and beauty salons have run out of appointments, and if you haven't already booked you're going to struggle to find a spare table in a pub tonight. After a few months of being kept away, it seems that shoppers are keen to spend again. The past few weeks have seen a surge in hiring, as businesses (accurately) predicted this bounce back in demand.

Frances Bishop is the founder of a children's clothing shop, The Pud Store. Because of the pandemic, she had to restructure aspects of her business, and started trading online but she says that now things are open again, her customers are excited to “get back to some sort of normality – just to come and see the clothes."

As we identified in our Resilience and Recovery report, female-founded firms across the UK have been most impacted by lockdown. However, with retail and hospitality being disproportionately female-led sectors, and the UK's vaccine programme continuing to storm ahead, reopening presents significant opportunities for female entrepreneurs. We expect that they will be more than able to rise to the challenge.

Webinars & Programmes
Join us for our webinar on Wednesday.

Speakers: Juliet Rogan, Head of High Growth and Entrepreneurs at Barclays; Cécile Reinaud, Founder of Seraphine; and Virginie Charles-Dear, Founder of ToucanBox
Join us for our webinar on Wednesday
Free
10am to 11.30am
14 April 2021

Female Founders Forum – Trade: Accessing New Markets

Juliet Rogan is Head of the High Growth & Entrepreneurs team at Barclays. She leads a national team of High Growth Relationship Directors focused on supporting companies to scale up.

Cecile Reinaud is the founder of Seraphine, an international maternity and fashion label. She grew Seraphine from nothing to a £50m company which she sold in 2020. She supports the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women and wants to use her experience to help many other women found and scale their businesses.

Virginie Charles-Dear is the founder of ToucanBox. It provides a subscription service which delivers a monthly package of activities for children and toddlers. They ship over 150 000 boxes every month, to people in the UK, Europe, and the US.

Female Founder Highlights
Here’s a quick round-up of the news:

Announced on International Women’s Day, the government is giving £50,000 grants to 40 female innovators. The grants have been given to women who have started businesses with extra social benefits. Recipient companies include an app to help victims of domestic abuse access emergency services and an ocean plastic recycling company.
Congratulations are due to another Female Founders Forum member Tugce Bulut. She, and the rest of her team at StreetBees have raised another £5m.
Further congratulations are in order for Faye Holland, another member of the Female Founders Forum whose company cofinitive has been named the best PR and Communications agency in East Anglia.
Huckletree runs regular "VC office hours" for female founders. Last year an entrepreneur raised £400K from one of these meetings, so it is well worth your while. This quarter they are partnering with SeedCamp. You can apply for a 30 minute slot here.

Government Support

HMRC has launched a series of live webinars covering customs arrangements on shipping goods between the EU and the United Kingdom. If you’re still getting to grips with the new arrangements you can sign up to a webinar here.
Even though the end of the pandemic is in sight, you may still be eligible for business support from the government. Here is a quick test to find out what financial support you can receive.
If you are going to be reopening physical locations soon, here is some advice on how to make your workplace more COVID-secure. The information is broken down for different businesses, with advice tailored to labs, retail, and even other people’s homes.
The government has updated their new post-Brexit visa system and our adviser Zenia Chopra details how the different types of visa work.
One of the most exciting announcements in the budget was the super-deduction, which will allow businesses to deduct 130% of investments from their taxable income. Our Research Director has written about all of the changes to corporation tax in a policy update here, and also about the super deduction in more detail here.
Help to Grow is a new scheme from the government for SMEs, which, as the name suggests, is aimed at helping businesses grow. There are two streams, one for improving management and one for improving digital tools. The management programme is a 12-week programme delivered by business schools, which at a 90% subsidy, only costs £750. The digital programme delivers free software advice to participating businesses, as well as vouchers for technology which can help boost your business’s productivity. You can learn more about them here.

Barclays Support and Opportunities

Barclays Women in Business Hub
Barclays is dedicated to levelling the playing field for female-led businesses so that more female founders start up and run businesses across the UK. We are a founding signatory of the HM Treasury Investing in Women Code, a commitment from the financial services industry which was launched in 2019 to improve female entrepreneurs’ access to tools, resources and finance. You can read more about Barclays’ three-year commitments to provide ongoing and meaningful support for female entrepreneurs plus helpful tools, guides, checklists and the wider support that is available for female-led businesses on the Barclays Women in Business hub here.

Barclays Money Management Hub
With many customers facing turbulent times, and so many coming to the end of loan repayment holidays, Barclays has created a dedicated Money Management Hub to help businesses keep their finances healthy. It’s continually evolving with lots of useful tips to help businesses budget and plan cashflow, as well as articles and guidance to help consider challenges businesses may be facing.

Barclays Marketplace
If you need to find new partners to help your business with payment services, pensions, insurance and funding for growth, visit Barclays Marketplace whose featured partners have a track record of delivering quality services in their field.

Eagle Labs Virtual Events
Barclays’ programme of virtual events covers a range of topics from cashflow management to building resilience to help entrepreneurs and start-ups navigate these uncertain times. Forthcoming events include a session on thinking differently about social media marketing and an event to demystify AI, machine learning, and machine intelligence. All events are free to attend and open to anyone. For more information visit the Eagle Lab event page.

Barclays COVID-19 Support Hub
The Barclays COVID-19 Support Hub provides the latest information, tools, and guidance to support businesses throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. This hub includes information about Barclays’ products, webinars, Facebook Live events, and more information on how to access government schemes.