Working from home - the cost effective location for a start-up

Reading through the sections on “location” in the growing batch of new textbooks for AQA AS Business Unit, you might be forgiven for thinking that there are only really two locations for a new business - retailing on the high street, or hiring a unit in an industrial park. What the textbooks largely ignore is the choice of an entrepreneur’s home as the starting location for a new business. I have come across a great website that focuses on home businesses - it would make a great support resource for the new AS units on starting a business…

EnterpriseNation is the name of the website. As an experience and enthusiastic home-worker, I’m looking forward to exploring the site further. It looks like there are some great case studies on the site.

Just glancing at the media section, there is a really useful summary of research into the use of homes as the location for start-ups. For example:

- In the UK, the home is the most popular location to start a business
- More than 60% of businesses are started from home; equal to more than 1,400 each week
- There are 2.1 million home based businesses in the UK, contributing £364 billion in turnover to the UK economy (remember that, in total, there are about 4.5 million separate businesses in the UK)
- The highest growth in home business is coming from Mums, young people and the over 50’s
- The fastest growing sectors are business & professional services, personal services, online trading, food and domestic energy
- 86% of home business owners want to grow their business, without leaving home. This was a challenge I found too tough to crack a couple of years ago - despite building a loft conversion just for the purpose of our business.
- Home business owners are IT savvy; in entries to the Enterprise Nation Home Business Award, 98% of entrants had a business website and 64% were utilising e-commerce platforms
- Home business owners are friendly to the environment; an increase in homeworking could cut peak traffic by up to 10% within 5 years
- The family benefits too! 87% of homeworking parents confirm that their being at home is good for the children who are being trained as next generation entrepreneurs!

As you might expect, there are lots of positive points in favour of home businesses. The research doesn’t explicitly mention some of the challenges faced by home entrepreneurs. For example, in my experience, loneliness was occasionally a hurdle, as is the problem of taking a break from a business that it literally all around you.