When looking into rebranding and building an online strategy, artisan market platform Pedddle turned to Keele University’s Business Gateway for resources and research.

Here they received support from the Keele Research and Innovation Support Programme (KRISP)*, which offers fully-funded support through academics and business advisors, with students working up-to 100 hours with the company employed as Research, Development & Innovation(RD&I) Advisors.

Nicki Capewell, Founder of Pedddle.com, spoke about her experience, saying; “We approached KRISP to look at research and development for success criteria for an online community, so we could ascertain what would work best. We had two fantastic students on the project who worked as Research Development and Innovation consultants. They brought their expertise and ideas, and were able to develop and delve deeper into research that looked at the profile of our typical user so we could use find our targeted audience and incorporate this to the strategy going forward."

“The KRISP project provided excellent resources needed to alleviate my time to focus on the day-to day business management, and provided ideas and research for the success and direction of the company.”

Pedddle is an online portal creating a link between local artisan markets and the creative businesses that trade at them. Many markets are independently owned and managed, and in the past have worked on a ‘word of mouth’ basis, Pedddle.com looks to have all markets in one place for both traders to promote and customers to have easy access.

Since taking part in KRISP, Pedddle.com has established its brand and continues to grow. They have over 200 registered markets and 150 stall holders. The website has received over 60,000 page views and has in excess of 16,500 users.

Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent businesses can benefit from a range of programmes that provide specialist support and funding, more details of which are available through Keele University’s Business Gateway - 01782 733001 / business.gateway@keele.ac.uk.

*The KRISP project (ref: 32R16P00711) is part-funded from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) as part of the European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF) England Growth Programme 2014-2020