Creating your business brand from scratch - with Black Saucers founder, Fraser Harrison (MBA Business Administration)

It's unavoidable, isn't it? When you start a business and often in the early stages you may have to consider a brand identity for your idea. 

The art of creating a brand - or an identity to support your idea - from the very start is not an easy task and we caught up with University of Birmingham student Fraser Harrison who has recently gone through this process to support his new start-up business, 'Black Saucers'.

Black Saucers offer tableware hire for events and weddings in London and Kent and this blog will give you an insight into the company's origins and the brand behind the story.

Fraser: My girlfriend has a successful wedding and events company, and had often mentioned how difficult it was to find quality tableware local to where we live. This caused a lightbulb moment really, and a friend and I started to research and curate an initial tableware collection which could be popular for events. We are still in the very early stages of the business, and are soft launching the business in late September and early October. Winter is an ideal time to test the waters before the busier summer wedding season.

The best part of our journey so far has been creating a brand and a logo to support the business. We started from a complete blank canvas and narrowed down the culture and brand we wanted to curate until we had a firm idea of what we wanted the business to become. 

The hardest part of starting a business so far has been having faith in ourselves. As a small business owner you are not going to be experts in everything, so it often requires you to think outside your comfort zone. Working in larger organisations you are so specialised in your role, whereas a small business owner must keep a keen eye over everything.

What do you wish you knew before you started your business?

I wish I knew how to code that's for sure. Also I wish I had known the importance of gaining feedback from your audience at each stage of the set up process. Its not just feedback on products that are essential, it's also website testing, usability testing, testing reactions to logo's and colour schemes. The more feedback at this stage the better.

The biggest takeaway from the experience so far has been what can be achieved when you really believe in what you are doing. The hours seem to fly by creating new ideas and building websites when you have an idea of how good you feel it can become and we are really excited to see what the future holds

With thanks to Fraser Harrison
Edited by Bob Lee