Dragons' Den tweet boosts business for Surrey print firm

Launched by Paphitis in 2010 Small Business Sunday aims to boost publicity and lead prospects for small businesses. They are asked to tweet @TheoPaphitis between 5pm and 7.30pm on Sunday evenings, with a message that succinctly describes their company and includes #SBS. Paphitis then reviews the tweets and selects the strongest six to retweet to his 250,000 followers. Winners are also listed on his website.

Last Sunday Neil Bridgland, owner of small digital print firm Scubaprint, tweeted Paphitis describing his company and 24 hours discovered it had been retweeted to nearly quarter of a million people.
 
Bridgland said that within one hour his website hits had doubled, and within two days his own Twitter site has gained over 100 new followers.

He added: "This is great for small businesses. Being selected as a winner gives us more clout and seems to have made communicating with some people a lot easier. I've contacted some of the other winners and they have responded immediately and I don’t think I would get the same response if I was cold-calling or emailing."

Bridgland, who launched his two-man, £170,000 a year company in 2008, said so far the publicity had generated at least two new jobs and he was hopeful that more would come out of it.

Scubaprint, which is on course to turnover £230,000 in 2012, has recently invested in a Xerox 1000 digital colour press and is due to move into a larger premises in the coming weeks. Bridgland is also currently looking to expand his staff by taking on two or three apprentices.

"I want to expand and bringing apprentices on board is a great way of building staff in such a small company because I want to train them up in all aspects of our printing work and then make them full time members of staff," he added.

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