Features / The surgery
Business Surgery: Wriggle
• Year established: 2014
• Where the company is based: King Street
• Sector: Food & Drink, Entertainment, Tech, Marketing
• Number of staff: 6
• Owner: Rob Hall
• Key clients: In Bristol: 150 business partners including Bristol Old Vic, Crofters Rights, No Man’s Grace, Bagel Boy, Biblos, Small Bar, Tobacco Factory Theatre, Fishers, Royal Navy Volunteer, Small Street Espresso, Noche Negra. And more than 100 in London.
• Website: www.getawriggleon.com
About the business
We made Wriggle to showcase local food, drink and entertainment businesses we love – with high quality product, good ethos and/or interesting story – to incentivise people to spend at local independents rather than chains and to boost the local economy and help with competitiveness. We give our customers exclusive last-minute offers at these brilliant local places (on their terms), thereby helping those businesses with visibility and efficiency. We’ve built up a user base of 16,000 Bristolians in a year, a strong social media platform and a foundation of 150 great indie food, drink and entertainment business partners. Wriggle is 6 people under 30. It’s a year old. And it’s born, bred and run in Bristol.
The Challenge
“Scale – Bristol is working well. People love the service, and the businesses are getting good custom. We feel part of the community. We now want to expand. How do can we work in multiple locations with that same community ethos we’ve worked so hard to create?”
FEEDBACK
Jon Gill
Corporate Partner at TLT leading their work in supporting fast growth technology businesses.
“Wriggle’s focus on local independents is a USP but also makes it time and resource intensive to curate the local market in other locations. They will need “boots on the ground” to understand the local dynamic and convert sales, although should engage these “brand ambassadors” so they work remotely and keep the cost base as lean as possible. However, these new recruits need to be aligned with Wriggle’s ethos and they should consider setting up a “new location team” who can spend a few months in a new city working with the ambassadors to ensure they get the best of local independent knowledge and the technology and sales support of Wriggle’s existing infrastructure.”
Andrew Wright
Partner and Private Markets leader, South West & Wales, Deloitte
Replicating success across multiple locations creates inherent difficulties for businesses founded on relationships – potential clients simply knowing who you are is the first, major hurdle. Knowing who to speak to is the second challenge, you need people with local knowledge and relationships. These hurdles are overcome through market and community presence through getting out and meeting clients at events. Employing a person in the town with the right skills, personality and contacts to work remotely spreading the word and developing relationships, supported by Bristol management, is a softer start. You cannot succeed remotely; you need to commit time and resource to each new location.