Member Blog

The production and trade of counterfeit goods in China is the thorn in the side of most well-known brands, but it’s not only the global giants that are affected. From rip-offs of fashion and beauty products to fake spirits and medicine, nearly every business could be impacted; particularly, those that manufacture their goods in the country. Is there anything that they can do?

It’s said that if a business wishes to see if its products are being counterfeited, it just needs to run a search on Alibaba. The Chinese auction site dwarfs equivalents such as eBay in terms both of its product range and revenue, and also acts as a major channel for the sale of fake goods, much to the frustration of brand owners.

Kering, the company behind luxury brands Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent, is currently suing the Chinese ecommerce group for encouraging and profiting from the sale of counterfeit goods on its platform. Like many brand owners, Kering is angry at what it considers to be Alibaba’s slow response to counterfeit allegations and what it perceives as ‘complicity’ in the sale of those items.

“My experience of Alibaba is that it has been slow to react in the past and well behind other sites, such as eBay,” agrees Tom Farrand, Managing Director, Trademarks, at Novagraaf in the UK. “This can be partly explained by the sheer volume of Chinese-originating counterfeit goods, and also the market for them. One of the problems shared by Alibaba and brand owners is that, at present, many customers are on the site not looking for real products.”

Farrand expects the case to lead to some improvements at the platform, but says that “there is still much to do and a long way to go”.

Taking action If you do find your products after running a search on Alibaba, what should you do? The platform’s complaint process is still the best place to start before starting a more expensive legal action. “The company’s rate of response to counterfeit action is starting to getting quicker, the complaint process has been improved and follow-up is better,” says Farrand. Online monitoring will help you to build up evidence of counterfeit activity that should make it possible to ensure the website removes the goods or seller.

Of course, brand owners are advised to tackle the source of the counterfeit goods, not just the channels in which they are sold. Where a problematic seller is identified on Alibaba, for example, additional investigation will help you to find out more about the product’s manufacturers and distribution channels in order to stamp them out at source.

Here, levels of IP coverage, as well as techniques to prevent and identify activity, will be important. This includes, for example:

• registering key brand and product names as trademarks, and innovative design features as design rights, so that you can seek legal redress for any unauthorised use of those trademark or design rights (e.g. for the manufacture, distribution and sale of trademarked goods);
• raising awareness of the issues within your business by educating your staff, business partners and customers;
• actively monitoring the online and offline market, recording, reporting and carefully analysing the findings;
• working closely with law enforcement authorities such as the Border Force (Customs) and local Trading Standards offices that have a statutory duty to enforce the criminal provisions of Trademarks Act; and
• taking enforcement action where appropriate.

If the manufacture of the fake goods is taking place in China, you will need to liaise with local agents or investigators and involve local police and authorities in order to target the manufacturer at source. This is not a simple task. Novagraaf provides anti-counterfeiting services to a number of brand names in the country, from online trademark monitoring to investigation, trap purchases, trademark training, trademark recordals and legal representation in customs seizure proceedings.

For more advice on developing an anti-counterfeiting strategy, read our frequently asked questions.

Import Duty

The amount of Duty paid is dependent on three things;

What the product is/is made of Classification Where the product is made Origin How much it costs Valuation

• If the goods you purchase originate (are made) outside the EU whether you import them directly or indirectly they will be subjected to import duty.
• Duty is usually charged as a % rate based on the cost of importing the item
• Duty Rates vary dependant on the type of good being imported i.e. the product Classification
• The amount of duty paid can also vary dependant on the origin of the goods. Some Countries have agreements with the EU which give them preferential i.e. reduced or even zero duty rates
• HMRC can go back 3 years to reclaim duty underpayments
• HMRC can charge penalties for errors that are found on a per instance basis

Once goods have been imported into the UK and the customs duty VAT paid those goods are deemed to be ‘in free circulation’. This means that they can move freely throughout the EU member states without incurring any further duty charges. This rules excludes excise goods which are subject to additional in-country excise-tax when entering another member state.

Classification

• There are more than 16,600 different classification codes
• Classification of a product is based on what it is used for and what materials it is predominantly made from.
• Whether or not you have an agent who handles customs entries on your behalf, as the importer you have a legal responsibility to ensure the correct classification is applied.
• Incorrect classification can lead to; delays in clearing goods, over or underpayment of duty and even to penalties from HMRC.
• The Classification is made up of up to 10 numbers and is based on the WTO World Trade Organisations harmonised system.
• An 8 digit code is acceptable on exports
• All 10 digits are required on imports

For more information on Import duty please also read the following:

https://norfolkchamber.co.uk/knowledge/article/facts-about-import-duty

Rihanna’s attempt to trademark her name ‘Robyn’ at the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has been opposed this week by DC Comics citing likelihood of confusion with Batman’s famous sidekick ‘Robin’. Novagraaf’s Helene Whelbourn examines the trademark implications of using your own name as your business name.

Rihanna certainly isn’t the first to seek to register her name as a trademark for use in business, but the opposition highlights one of the major shortfalls of such a strategy, even for those that are otherwise well known: someone may have got there first! Equally, not everyone’s name will be considered ‘distinctive’ enough to satisfy trademark registration requirements. Names are treated no different to any other trademark.

What should you do, therefore, if you have chosen to name your business after yourself? There are many examples of ‘famous’ names that have fallen foul of trademark law.

The Elvis Presley trademark has been the subject of multiple court cases over who owns or has the right to use the name. In the UK, it was held that the name had been used for so many merchandising products by so many companies that it lacked the ability to distinguish the goods of one company from those of another company.

The fashion (e.g. Louis Vuitton), leisure (e.g. Hilton hotels), and food and drink (e.g. Kellogg’s) sectors provide many examples of successful brands that have been built on the founder’s name. However, there are plenty of cautionary tales, too, from family in-fighting, such as with Gucci and Asprey, to loss of name after business sale, as both Elizabeth Emmanuel and Karen Millen found to their frustration.

Much will also depend on the relative distinctiveness of a name or surname for use in identifying a particular owner’s products or services; in other words, the more unusual your name, the more likely it may be deemed to be distinctive. (John Smith’s Brewery providing here the exception that proves the rule, but then the brand name dates back to the 1800s.) Similarly, the more common the name, the more likely it is that someone else will have got there first.

Even if the name is available, it is not guaranteed that the UK IPO or WIPO will accept the trademark application. Here, you may be able to improve your odds by combining your name with a distinctive logo, for example.

Top tips

• You should always search to check your name is available for use and registration before you start a business under the name.
• If you want to be famous, register your name (if possible) before you become famous to stop others jumping on the merchandising bandwagon.
• Even if you don’t want to be famous, if your name is your business name and if the name is capable of being registered, you should do so. It’s an asset of the business and a registration could increase the value of the company to a potential buyer.
• If you sell your business, make sure your name registration is not sold with it – if the name is the essential value of the business, you can always licence it to the new owner.

Refusals after the fact If you have been refused registration of your name as a trademark, either for the reason that it was not considered distinctive or because it was already taken, you are not prevented from using your name for ordinary business purposes. However, it is advisable to consult with a trademark attorney to ensure that your use of the mark is not infringing the existing registered right.

Your attorney will also be able to advise you on the steps that you can take to obtain protection for your business name, including any adjustments you may need to make in order to register it as a trademark.

As Rihanna has found in her application to register ‘Robyn’ for use in merchandising, oppositions can come from the most surprising of sources.

Helene Whelbourn is a trademark attorney at Novagraaf in the UK

Coca-Cola has recently applied to the US Patent and Trade Mark Office (USPTO) for two Twitter hashtags: #cokecanpics and #smilewithacoke. Novagraaf’s Claire Jones explains what’s currently registerable when it comes to social media hashtags.

Although hashtags have been used in social media for some time, it was Twitter that led to their use on a widely popular scale. In 2009, it introduced the use of hashtags to group words of a tweet to a theme. By 2010, hashtags were being used to identify trending topics on the Twitter homepage.

Since then, hashtags have become widely used across a variety of social networks, as well as appearing in almost every type of media possible. There is even the term Verbal Hashtagger (yes, it is a real thing) to describe those among us who verbalise the word ‘hashtag’ in real-life conversations.

Social media by its very nature is built upon a culture of sharing and openness, and ‘real-time’ marketing, all of which has become the norm. However, this is creating a challenging landscape – where do the boundaries of intellectual property (IP) lie?

#Isitregisterable? A hashtag is an expression of an idea or a theme; it promotes something; and, apart from brand identity, can be searched for and commented on. If it is used to promote a brand, product or service, it generates sales and brand recognition. Therefore, should it not be protected?

Hashtags are an important marketing tool; however, they do not automatically turn a brand name or advertising slogan into a registerable trademark.

The USPTO has gone as far as issuing guidance in respect of hashtags due to the number of recent applications.

“A mark comprising of or including the hash symbol (#) or the term ‘hashtag’ is registerable as a trademark of service only if it functions as an identifier of the source of the applicant’s goods or services.” (The full guidance can be reviewed here).

In the UK, for a mark to be registerable, it must be distinctive and have the capacity to individualise the goods and services of a particular undertaking. If there is that link, and the mark does not send a message that could apply to any undertaking, then, as with other trademarks, a hashtag-based mark will be registerable.

Extensive use of a hashtag could also give rise to common law rights of passing off, but proving that your company has acquired the requisite goodwill in the hashtag, needed to have the right to stop someone else from using it, is likely to be challenging.

#freecheesefriday In the UK, cheese producer Wyke Farms organises ‘Free Cheese Fridays’, which has been running for four years and draws more than 25,000 entrants each month. Each Friday, a winner is selected and receives 300g of cheddar cheese. Its success with #freecheesefriday has resulted in a successful application for the trademark ‘Free Cheese Friday’. Wyke claims that it is the first UK brand to register a mark linked to a social media campaign.

Although the case highlights the willingness of the UK’s IP Office (IPO) to accept social media usage as evidence of acquired distinctiveness, does it really change that much? If the campaign was run on a different forum, it is likely that Wyke Farms would still have been able to prove distinctiveness through use and, therefore, register the mark.

#generic? The hashtag symbol is a generic term, with no source-identifying significance. The question of registerability will therefore lie with the term accompanying the hashtag.

#infringement? Does including a brand’s hashtag trademark in a social-media post make you liable for trademark infringement? If the use makes it appear as if there is a connection or link with the trademark owner, it could well do. The question will need to be asked whether the use of a hashtag is creating a likelihood of confusion or association with the trademark owner or simply promoting the intended social media message.

The possibility of a tweet ‘going viral’ can happen very quickly and there will be a delicate balance between infringement and capturing the public’s attention at a certain moment.

#icantbreathe In a recent case in the US following the death of Eric Garner, two US companies applied to register “I can’t breathe” and “#Icantbreathe” as trademarks. The words ‘I can’t breathe’ were used as a rallying slogan in protests across the world against the decision not to charge the police officers involved. There were more than 1.3 million tweets for #Icantbreathe.

Both applications were refused by the USPTO as there may have been the suggestion of a connection with Mr Garner. It further commented: “a hashtag generally serves no source-indicating function and adding such symbol or term to an otherwise unregisterable mark does not render the mark registerable”.

#JeSuisCharlie Following the Charlie Hebdo attack in France, the #JeSuisCharlie hashtag was considered to be one of the most retweeted hashtags of all time. Not only that, but in France alone, there were more than 50 separate applications to register the phrase as a trademark, none of which came from the actual creator of the original image and words.

#TurtlevsDodo US car care company Turtle Wax batted heads with UK-based Dodo Juice last year. Both companies ran a campaign asking customers to take a ‘selfie’ in the reflection of their cars and post them to the company’s social media platforms. Both companies used #reflectie to promote their competitions.

Dodo Juice launched its campaign more than a week before TurtleWax, but Turtle Wax had applied to register #reflectie prior to the launch of both campaigns and demanded Dodo stop using #reflectie, claiming all rights to it in the US, UK and wider EU. The resulting argument was conducted over social media, until both campaigns seemed to run their course.

#conclusion Hashtags are a great way to promote a business or marketing campaign but, as with all things, #proceedwithcaution.

Claire Jones is a trademark attorney in the London office of Novagraaf

A recent article in The Wall Street Journal addresses the fascinating topic of scent marks. While the marketing world is increasingly exploring the possibilities of advertising through appeals to our senses other than sight, among them touch and smell, the question arises as to whether scent marks can be protected legally – and hence carry value for their holders.

While in the US some scent marks have received the USPTO examiner’s approval, and descriptions such as ‘the mark consists of the scent of’ bubble gum, oranges, piña colada, vanilla, and so on can be read in the Register, this is not the case in the EU or in Switzerland. Indeed, for a mark to be registered in those jurisdictions, it must first be capable of being represented graphically. Failing that, a mark can simply not be registered in a paper or electronic Register.

Capturing the scent There is a reason for this. Indeed, the problem with scent marks may be more technical than legal, as the case of the Eddy Finn Ukulele Company’s piña colada-scented ukuleles shows. This company, which sells ukuleles smelling of piña coladas, discovered that ukuleles they had shipped to overseas markets had lost their scent during the trip.

The volatility of scents is not the only issue, however. As any perfume-wearer would know, scents also evolve with time and moreover are perceived differently from one person to another. And these problems also have implications for the registration process. What should be filed? Bottled samples, whose content will change over time, and which two different examiners will perceive in different ways? Chemical formulas?Descriptions? The answer has yet to be found. Moreover, if we keep in mind that the function of a mark is to distinguish brands from each other, this might prove to be quite the challenge when dealing with two marks ‘consisting of the scent of oranges’, for example.

That said, scents remain a wonderful marketing tool worth exploring. When we recall that smell is the sense that conveys the strongest emotional value of all and that emotions play a crucial role in consumer behaviour, the massive potential of scents in the market becomes clear. We all have our madeleine of Proust, and smell can bring to the surface feelings and sensations that were deeply buried within us and thought lost forever.

Similarly, studies have shown that the smell of vanilla has a calming effect on cattle, and this has led to the wide use of this scent in the feed industry. A pleasant scent could have the power to blur the sensation of time for consumers and modify their visual or taste perceptions in ways that may encourage them to purchase more. This power is already being harnessed in boutiques and malls around the world: Abercrombie & Fitch, with its signature scent ‘Fierce’, and Verizon Wireless, with the ‘flowery musk’ that perfumes its stores, are two major players that use scent marketing with flair.

Anca Draganescu is IP counsel at Novagraaf in Switzerland

We have been working on the Search Engine Optimisation forQuiddi Compare (https://quiddicompare.co.uk/) for just over 6 months. Seach Engine Optmisation, also known as SEO, involves using a host of techniques toboost one’sposition on Google for hundreds and thousands of relevant keywords. After implementing ourSEO changes, it usually takes Google around 6 months to show your true results. You may find that your rankings flunctuate a lot in the early days but by 6 months, Google has a better indication of your site’s worth and can rank you accordingly.

So now that we’ve done our 6 months for Quiddi, one of the leading loan comparison sites in the UK,we can finally see the results of our hard work which include a first page position for ‘compare payday loans,’ ‘payday loan comparison’ and ‘best payday loans.’

Our Approach

We had to be careful. The SEO techniques in the UK for the payday loans industry are notoriously spammy, something that actually caused Matt Cutts, the head of Search at Google to issue a specific Payday Loan Algorithm to tidy things up (find the video below). This algorithm means companies trying to rank for payday loans receive special attention. Accordingly,your SEO techniques need to be whiter than white to provide sustainable results. If you plan to use thin content which is duplicatedor generate unnatural links, you will be penalised. With this in mind, we executed the following strategy:

Content –We created useful and resourceful information surrounding all the different types of loans, credit cards and mortgages. We created a source of information so whether it was in the main body or on the sidebar, you could find every bit of information that you need. This achieved to keep users on the site for longer because the information was relevant to them.

Links –The SEO for loans can be very spammy. So rather than buying links from unknown and irrelevant websites, we made a relationship with every company we got a link from so it looked as natural as possible, including PR in news articles and money guides.

User Experience –The user experience is more and more important in Google’s eyes. To emphasize this, we put the site on a secure service (https), made the site responsive (and mobile friendly) and included a host of images and videos to create an overall great experience for customers.

Social –We worked on the social media following for the website to follow the premise that a site with more tweets and shares looks more relevant than one without. We ran competitions on facebook and twitter and included iPad giveaways to generate social traction.

Looking further ahead, we are creating various tools and widgets for users to play around with and find the best loan product for them. We want to show the search engines that we are more than just content and loans but somewhere you can get advice and insight that you won’t find anywhere else.

Some might ask what is the difference between computing in a village, a town or a city? The answer probably comes down to how many community hubs (pubs) there are within a 10 or 15 minute walk. In other words not a lot of difference. Although there is a need to walk through the community, whatever the location,and make those connections worth making and ignoring everything else, unless it is in your face. By making these connections a software developer is able to practice their art.

I have found that a quick dash to the shop to talk to the lady serving and sometimes the odd customer makes for the removal of any mental blocks that might be occurring.

A Software developer (coder / programmer) requires what many others also require. Three meals a day, punctuated with the odd snack (Fruit :), or Eccles cakes – used to be chocolate), a roof over their head, decent tech to work with, and funds to pay for overheads. These days you could throw in a decent internet connection also.

Why is it a challenge? If the days work is not a challenge then you are not making forward progress. If things seem too easy then I get the feeling that something is wrong. It might just be me, everything is a challenge to me (feels like running uphill all the time), it makes life interesting and it keeps the largest muscle in my body happily exercised. Sometimes (well quite often actually) this muscle tells me to go to the pub and have my one pint.

I shall say that there is a beautiful moment in any workday when the challenge disappears and the last peice of the jigsaw puzzle falls into place. This is momentary until the next challenge presents itself.

The fact that the business is situated in South Norfolk has importance for two reasons: 1.it is close to the Suffolk border, 2. It allows for inclusion in the Norfolk Chamber. Being close to Suffolk is good as it is a whole different market place to sell into, and inclusion in the Norfolk Chamber has many benefits, one of which is this forum.

I seek the next Challenge.

Getting listed on Google’s first results page can be very difficult. There are many tools and services that promise to get your website listed. What exactly will help you to get the results that you want? There are five things that will get your website on Google’s first results page. Guaranteed.

The key to high rankings:

Step 1: You have to know what you’re doing

Don’t just blindly follow the advice of gurus and self-proclaimed ‘SEO experts’. Don’t believe everything that you read. When it comes to search engine optimisation, most things are opinions instead of facts.

Do your own tests. Create a website just for testing purposes and find out what works and what doesn’t. Educate yourself and keep current. That is very important because ‘SEO’ changes rapidly.

Step 2: You have to work with your web pages

Some people think that search engine optimiszation is a one-shot thing, or that ‘SEO’ can be done on auto-pilot. Unfortunately, that doesn’t work.

If you want to succeed, you have to invest a lot of time and effort in your search engine optimisation activities. There are several things that you have to do to make sure that your website becomes a success: keyword research, optimising pages, fixing technical errors, etc.

Without investing time and work into your web pages, you won’t get the best results. Fortunately, there are tools that will help you to get things done as efficiently as possible.

Step 3: Show search engines that you’re serious about it

Google wants to rank high quality websites in the search results. This is the mysterious “authority” that is often mentioned in SEO articles.

To build a website that has ranking authority, you have to do several things: create web pages that have good content, present that content in an attractive way and engage with your audience. Basically, your website has to deliver what the web searchers wants.

Step 4: Be smarter than your competitors

Everybody wants to be listed on Google’s first results page. The person who does more, will get better rankings. If your competitors invest more time in search engine optimisation, they will get better rankings.

It’s also important that you invest your time in the right things. A person who is working a lot on the wrong things won’t get good results. If you work smarter than your competitors, you will get better results. If you do the right things in the right order, you will get results more quickly. Here’s an easy to understand step-by-step tutorial.

Step 5: Be patient

Website promotion takes time. It is possible to get some quick wins but lasting results that will deliver a steady stream of new visitors to your website take some time.It takes time to research the right keywords, it takes time to optimise your web pages, it takes time to fix the architecture of your website, etc. Be patient, do the right things, and your website will get the rankings that it deserves.

Website promotion isn’t rocket science. The five steps above are a sure way to get in Google’s search results.

CRITICAL MAGENTO UPDATE:

The Magento team released a critical security patch (SUPEE-5344) to address a remote command execution (RCE) vulnerability back in February. It’s been more than two months since the release and still more than 50% of all the Magento installations have not been patched, leaving them open to attacks.

This means hundreds of thousands of websites are vulnerable right now, worst yet they are e-Commerce websites. This means that they are used to sell goods online, capturing personal identifiable information (PII), including credit card information. The impacts of Magento websites getting compromised can be devastating for every online buyer that uses or has used a website built on the platform.

This is a very serious vulnerability, it allows allows an attacker to run any command they want on the server, allowing them to take full ownership of the vulnerable online shop and it’s associated web server.

Full Disclosure Going Live in a couple of days

This vulnerability was discovered by the Check Point research team and reported to Magento back in January. They gave us an early warning to help spread the word to as many Magento admins as possible. In a few days (likely this Monday or Tuesday – April 21st), they will release full details of the vulnerability on their blog. Once the details are released, it is expected that within hours there will be a working Proof of Concept (PoC) available for the masses. The severity of this issue cannot be understated, we cannot stress the importance of patching immediately.

If you own a Magento site, you must patch it immediately! Go to the download page, search for SUPEE-5344 and follow the instructions.

There has been a definite increase in the number of reports on webmaster forums, including the Google ones, and many of the reports involve the popular WordPress plugin Wordfence.

Google has never published a list of IPs they crawl from, as those IPs can change at any time. They also have bots used for specific products as well, such as the ones for Google AdSense and Google AdWords.

One of the issues is Google the Local-aware crawling by Googlebot, which not only come from completely new IPs, but also from countries and IPs based outside of the US, which seems to be triggering false positives in bot blocking scripts. If you are unsure if the Googlebot visiting is a real one or not, you can do a reverse DNS lookup to confirm.

Why do people block bots? A variety of reasons – to block server load, to block attacks, to prevent fake referrals. Generally users will white list with a list of known Googlebot IPs, as many people will spoof Googlebot, but when Google switches up the IPs and a user inadvertently blocks Googlebot, it can take quite some time to rectify this situation.

This was part of a threat from a user in WebMasterWorld:

“I have a system that prevents ‘bots from crawling my site. It has a whitelist, to which I add Google IPs. I had always added them manually because new IPs didn’t come up too often, and I wanted to make sure that no one was spoofing Google. About 10 days ago, Google apparently switched to crawling from about a dozen new IPs. I was not paying close attention to my system and those IPs got blocked. They were blocked for about 3 or 4 days.” …

“The traffic picked up a little bit, but slowly. Google wasn’t adding the pages back even though they had recrawled them. Some pages came back, but some of my top pages (for example, Connor McDavid) were nowhere to be found in Google – even when I searched with my site’s name (as many users do). I tried asking Google to recrawl multiple times, but after a week they still aren’t adding back pages for which I request a recrawl.”

Google management also commented today on the Google Webmaster Help forums with the same situation, where a site is blocking Googlebot.

Blocking googlebotWordfence, a popular WordPress plugin for blocking bots, is one that repeatedly comes up, with both the free and paid versions having issues.

Hosting companies can also block Googlebot to save server resources. Many, many years ago, GoDaddy hosting blocked Googlebot from crawling all the sites they were hosting for their hosting clients.

Bottom line, if you are using any kind of bot blocking script, you will want to check Google Webmaster Tools daily (if not more than once a day) to check on any issues with Googlebot being blocked.

Grants of between £5,000 and £500,000 are available from our Growing Business Fund. As the new financial year kicks in, we thought it would be a great opportunity to give you some top tips on securing a grant, which is funding you don’t pay back.

New Anglia Local Enterprise Partnership helps to drive business growth and enterprise in Norfolk and Suffolk and we’ve secured funding from Government for companies in the two counties which want to grow their business and employ more people.

We’ve given grants to more than 180 companies since April 2013. But, what is the criteria and which other businesses have been successful?

Here are our top tips.

• You need to be looking to invest, expand and recruit new staff
• You must be an established and growing SME in Norfolk or Suffolk and your project must be based in one or other of the counties
• What’s the project? You need to be considering something really tangible to help your growth plans. You may need new equipment, or machinery or to buy larger premises.
• The Growing Business Fund can provide up to 20% of the cost of the total funding you need. However, you must be able to secure at least 80% from private funds such as a bank, your business, other investors etc.
• You need to demonstrate why you’ve been unable to secure all the funding you require from other financial sources, be it a loan or another grant scheme.
• It’s really important that you meet the criteria and supply all the information we need in your application. The full criteria is here.

Companies which have secured grants range from manufacturers to digital companies and specialist food companies to sign-makers. Here are some case studies of justsome of the local companies who’ve received grants from our Growing Business Fund, to help them grow. Click here

Find out more:

Visit our Growing Business Fund web page here

Phone our New Anglia Growth Hub on 0300 333 6536 and meet up with one of our Growth Hub Advisers to get some free face-to-face advice or mail [email protected]

Watch a short video of three businesses which have benefited from grants here