The third in this year's series of PBLink-BPCC seminar mixers organised for Polish entrepreneurs in the UK was held in Manchester's Instituto Cervantes on 1 May, the tenth anniversary of Poland's accession to the EU.
The opening speeches, from Polish consul-general to Manchester, Lukasz Lutostański, and Michael Dembinski, the BPCC's chief advisor, praised the entrepreneurial energy of Polish migrants who set up their businesses in the UK over the past ten years. Representing the event partner MoneyGram, Puru Desai spoke about the importance of Poles to his firm's money transfer business, and outlined the regulatory changes that have affected the sector. Bartek Kowalczyk, PBLink's founder, talked about the role of Polish Business Link in supporting Polish entrepreneurs in the UK.
The main part of the seminar-mixer event focused on e-commerce. There were four presentations, each extremely practical, covering different aspects of sales and marketing online. Leszek Tomczakowski of WebsitesGallery, explained how one can easily set up a functional e-commerce site, and showed some of the simple tools available for building an online shop from scratch. Heather Robinson from Skittish Consultancy, talked about optimising your e-commerce site for search engines, listing the numerous tricks that can help ensure that your site comes up on the first page of a Google search. She also talked about Google Adwords from the perspective of SMEs. Tomasz Kowalczyk and Andrzej Korza from Inteon Mobile talked about the way that the smart phone is revolutionising e-commerce, and the advances that mobile commerce (m-commerce) would bring – demonstrating in-store beacons that guided shoppers to special offers. Charlotte Britton from Optimum Exposure focused on social media and e-commerce, explaining how companies can make the most of services like Facebook and Twitter to grow their businesses.
There was a case study from Bartosz Libicki, from EnterUK Market, a company helping to get goods from Polish SMEs into the British market. This was followed by a formal and informal networking session. In the first, everyone had 30 seconds to introduce themselves and their companies; then participants had the opportunity to swap business cards with one another. The networking proved so successful, given the fascinating presentations and the quality of the guests, that moving on from the Spanish institute to a Greek bar, the Polish entrepreneurs in Great Britain celebrated 10 years in the EU in a fitting style.
Partners of the event were MoneyGram and TurnerLaw and supporters: BC Print, Inteon Mobile and Confidalia Events.
