Triumphant night for Cass at Growing Business Awards

What a fantastic night at the Growing Business Awards Ceremony and gala dinner on Monday 14 November!

The Growing Business Awards are the longest established and most prestigious awards for UK entrepreneurs and fast-growth companies.  The gala dinner and awards ceremony was hosted by the BBC’s Declan Curry (pictured right with the Your Business Your Future logo behind him) and attended by Eric Pickles MP, Secretary of State for Communities, Mark Prisk MP, Minister for Business and Enterprise, James Caan, formerly of Dragons’ Den, Julie Meyer, founder of Ariadne Capital and now an online Dragon, Annabel Karmel, of children’s cookery book fame, and Will King, eponymous founder of King of Shaves.

And we were there too!  Your Business Your Future and Cass Business School were the exclusive research partners for the Growing Business Awards 2011 and took a very active role in the whole process.

Izindi Visagie, intern at the Peter Cullum Centre for Entrepreneurship at Cass, identified many high quality potential candidates and encouraged them to enter.  Remarkably, three of the businesses who won awards had entered only as a result of Izindi contacting them!

Your Business Your Future MD, Gerard Burke, was one of the judges and presented the Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award at the gala ceremony.

And the winner of the Young Entrepreneur of the Year was Cass alumnus, George Graham, MD of designer fashion emporium, Wolf and Badger.

George and his brother, Henry, who founded the business together, have built an innovative combination of a designer department store and an incubator for up and coming British designers.  Wolf and Badger is now a multi-award winning destination shop for those with their finger on the fashion pulse in London.

George is pictured here (holding his  trophy!) with, from left to right, Simon Fielder (Bird & Bird), Gerard Burke and Will King.

As part of his prize, George has won a fully funded place on the Better Business Programme.  Participating in the programme will enable George and Henry to develop their strategy for the next stage of growth of Wolf and Badger.  Gerard says, “George is a very talented young man and he and his brother have created something innovative and wonderful which also helps young British designers.  We’re hugely looking forward to working with them and helping them create the future they want for their business and for themselves.”