It would be fair to say that the last few years have been transformative times for all of us, in so many ways. We’ve seen businesses start up in areas we wouldn’t have imagined before the pandemic, entrepreneurs pivoting in a heartbeat in response to the unique challenges lockdown presented them and, sadly, a number of businesses unable to weather the successive storms we’ve seen since the beginning of 2020.
Given the seismic shift in the conditions in which Scotland’s smallest traders have found themselves operating, it’s vital that we understand how they’re doing now.
This report provides the most comprehensive study FSB in Scotland has ever undertaken, asking business owners from every sector and every area of Scotland about the state of their business, the challenges they have faced and the opportunities they see ahead.
It will perhaps come as little surprise that, given the chaos and crises of the last few years, there is no uniform conclusion to be drawn about the exact state of the average Scottish small business - if, indeed, such a thing exists. Rather, when we analysed the broad range of topics businesses told us about, the key takeaway in many cases was that there was no overwhelming majority for one answer over others.
Encouragingly, however, the findings do reveal that three fifths of Scottish small businesses have plans for growth in the next year. This offers hope that the much discussed ‘recovery’, from the pandemic at least, is now underway.