Essex’s aspiring businesswomen are being encouraged to head to Colchester Business Centre with their best business ideas to take one of 100 places in the re-launch of an award-winning business support programme.

Ipswich Star: Colbea's Colchester Business Centre. Picture: ColbeaColbea's Colchester Business Centre. Picture: Colbea (Image: Archant)

Have you got a great business idea and just want the opportunity to develop it?

Thanks to a £32,740 grant from the Natwest Skills & Opportunities Fund, Colbea is offering 100 places on In the Market for Success Too (IM4S 2) to budding female entrepreneurs for just £50.

The complete start-up package, worth over £2,000, includes training workshops, business mentoring, a free virtual office service for 12 months and a test trading spot on Colchester’s High Street market.

First launched in 2017, IM4S assisted in the creation of 83 new businesses over 18 months, won the National Enterprise Network Enterprise Engagement Award in November 2018, and culminated in Samantha Luxford, winning a two-month trading opportunity in Fenwick’s Colchester High Street store.

She said; “I am very grateful to Colbea for providing the IM4S course.”

Jackie Clifford director of Clarity Learning & Development, is the course leader of the re-launched IM4S 2 programme.

She said: “I’m thrilled to be part of the team delivering In the Market for Success 2. This is a unique opportunity for women who are thinking of starting a business or who are in the very early days of their business to come together, learn heaps and form an ongoing network of support.

“I’m looking forward to seeing confidence blossom, determination grow and businesses succeed; the ripple that come from one woman starting her business is enormous and will have an impact on family, friends, community and the wider world – who wouldn’t be overjoyed to have the chance to be part of that?”

The first In the Market for Success 2 courses begins on March 8, 2019.

Booking is essential. Apply now at www.colbea.co.uk/im4s or call 01206 548 833