Rotherham Investment & Development Office (RiDO) Main Street, Rotherham S60 1AE

"Without Darren and his amazing team my business would have still been a dream. His input and his coaching from his team has pushed me to make the leap and I'm so pleased I did. Iv gone from being employed to running a medium sized workshop employing 3staff and looking for a 4th member. For anyone considering contacting Darren for support, I cant recommend him enough. 5 stars just isn't enough!"

"We approached RiDO as we were starting Fragrance Oils Direct. We had an existing business but this was much more a traditional service led business where the new venture was on-line retail. Darren spent time with us, listening to our business plan and offering advice and guidance. He was a useful sounding board and gave us confidence that the route we were planning made sense. We attended a number of video call courses (the business was started at the beginning of the pandemic) including SEO optimisation, photography and video making, marketing and social media. All of these courses helped us in different ways. During lockdown many of our customers were furloughed and spent a lot of time on social media, meaning that many of our sales were coming via social media platforms. Now that Covid restrictions have eased we have found that the majority of our business is coming from internet searches. We still get business via social media but we can see the shift in customer behaviour. The groundwork that we put in with SEO around keywords, image optimisation, alt text, metatabs etc. is now paying dividends. We are moving up Google rankings for key words and are seeing this reflected in the number of orders and new customers finding us and becoming repeat customers. All of the above was achieved far more effectively with the assistance provided by RiDO and their associates. Special thanks go out to Laura for her marketing advice and Dan for his SEO advice. Both of which have helped us massively."

"Launchpad is a fantastic service to support new businesses get off the ground. Prior to accessing their support we were unsure how to get started. The free business advice from business mentors (especially Darren, Laura and Danny) and business planning workshops has been vital to our launch. We got support with writing our business plan, applying for funding, marketing and promotion, and search engine optimisation etc. This helped us to turn our initial idea into a successful business called Village Physio. It’s extremely valuable to us that we are still able to access support after beginning to trade and we can re-do any workshops we need a reminder in. We cannot recommend the service enough!! Thank you"

"Where do I start... Darren at his team at Launchpad have been great for me and Flex Residential. The support they've offered is second to none! Wanted to place on record a massive thank you from Flex Residential."

"We’re so appreciative for all the support that RIDO & Launchpad have offered us since starting our small business. They’ve helped us with all aspects of business knowledge from customer profiling to paid ads on social media and online. The support is second to none and we wouldn’t be where we are without them. Thank you!"