There are nights in the business calendar you go to because you feel you should. The Courier Business Awards isn’t one of them. We’ve been in the room every year, and on Friday night we were back at the Apex City Quay in Dundee with almost 800 other people, for the 13th running of the awards.
It’s been a few years since Purple Imp last sponsored an award. It makes no difference. We wouldn’t miss it.
A room full of people getting on with it
You hear a lot about how hard it is to run a business at the moment, and much of it is true. Costs are up, staff are hard to find, and everyone has an opinion on what AI is about to do to them. So it does you good to spend an evening in a room where the conversation is about what people have built.
The organisers reported a record number of entries this year, and you could feel that in the room. There’s a real, positive energy around business in Dundee and across the region at the moment, and nights like this are where you notice it most.
What winning looks like round here
The thing I like most about these awards is the range. Look at some of the businesses that went home with a trophy:
- Halley Stevensons, Business of the Year and Medium to Large Business winner. A Dundee fabric manufacturer founded in 1864, which started out making sailcloth when the city had a whaling fleet and now makes waxed cotton for names around the world.
- Verdala, winner of the Small Business award.
- Pinchy’s Gelato, winner of Young Business, from Pitlochry.
- Kanzen For Life, winner of the Community award.
- AJ Renewables, winner of Transition to Net Zero.
- Geoff Brown, who received the Outstanding Contribution award from the First Minister, after more than half a century in business in Perth.
A mill founded in 1864 and a young gelato business, on the same stage on the same night. Jimmy Campbell, Halley Stevensons’ managing director, put it nicely: “We’re proud to represent Dundee in primary manufacturing.” You can read about all the winners in The Courier’s full round-up.
Clients past, present and future
A night like this is also a reminder of how small and how connected this business community is. Look around that room and you’re looking at clients past, clients present and, if we behave ourselves, a few clients of the future. Which is exactly why we go.
And some of the names on the night made us very proud.
- Economy Car & Van Hire won the Dundee Family award. We built their website and online booking and run their marketing, so we’ve seen up close how much work goes into a family business. Nobody deserves it more. Huge congratulations to all of them.
- Discovery Stone made the Small Business shortlist in a seriously strong category. Getting that far, in a record year, means something.
Two more names we know well were up in lights as sponsors, with Walker Luxury Jeweller behind the Service award and Alpha Projects behind Brand Marketing and Social Media. Awards like this only happen because local businesses put their names behind them, and it’s good to see people we’ve built websites for doing exactly that.
When someone you’ve worked with gets called up on that stage, you clap a bit louder than you’d care to admit. The win is theirs, and all of the work behind it is theirs. We’re just glad to have played a small part.
Why we still go without a logo on the table
We’ve sponsored before and it was good to do, but sponsoring isn’t the reason we turn up. We go because this is our patch. We’re a Dundee business, we’ve been here since 2016, and most of what we know about running one has come from other people in rooms like that.
It’s also a good way to remember what we’re all here for. Our job, whether it’s a website, marketing or being found locally, is only worth doing if it helps businesses like these grow. A night full of them is a better measure of that than any report.
When we audited 100 Dundee business websites for our Dundee Digital Benchmark, the headline was how much room there is to improve online. Friday night is the other half of that story: the businesses themselves are in brilliant shape, and many of them are better than their websites let on.
Well done, everyone
Congratulations to every winner, everyone shortlisted, and everyone who put themselves forward. Entering takes nerve and a lot of paperwork. Thanks also to The Courier, Henderson Loggie and all the sponsors for putting on the night.
See you next year. We’ll be the ones clapping too loudly.
And if you were in the room on Friday and we didn’t get the chance to say hello, come and say it now.
Got a problem like this? Good. We like those.
Tell us what you’re dealing with and we’ll tell you honestly what we’d do.
