Viva Lewes Issue #114 March 2016

trade secrets
Sonny Cutting
Marketing Director and Lewes Expo organiser
Photo by Lizzie Lower
The 2016 Lewes Expo returns to the Town
Hall on the 17th March, and it’s a great opportunity
for small and medium-sized businesses
to connect with each other, to share
expertise and success stories. We’ve got room
for 80 exhibitors and, in addition to networking,
we’ll have talks and workshops from our speakers
Lucy Wilkes, Claire Scott, Richard Williams,
Emma Pearce, Nick Price and Sandra Banks.
They’ll be covering a wide range of subjects from
social media, coaching for business success, advice
on planning requirements and listed buildings
protection, and bridging the gap between
‘millennials’ and baby boomers.
This will be the fourth year of the Lewes
Expo but it’s the first that I’ve organised.
Claire Kirtland, who runs The Hive and who
originally set up the Expo, was looking for
someone to take over the Lewes event while I was
looking to expand NetXP – the events company
born of my first business, Sussex Pages. That’s
a business marketing and media agency which
specialises in digital, creative and social media
management, so the face-to-face events were the
perfect complement. Claire will be there on the
17th and I owe her a huge debt of gratitude for
the support she’s offered during the handover.
Whilst the Lewes Expo was established as a
very local, community event, we’re looking
to expand it to bring in commerce from the
wider Sussex area. As well as local businesses,
we’ve got exhibitors from Brighton, Eastbourne
and Uckfield and from all sorts of sectors – from
reflexologists and osteopaths to security companies,
architects and surveyors. Our Sussex Pages
database allows us to connect businesses from
across the area. It’s like a business-to-business
match-making service.
We make sure the events are fun and interactive
too so, in addition to our speakers and
workshops, each one has a theme. Our recent
Burgess Hill Expo had a poker challenge and the
Lewes Expo will have a Monopoly quiz in aid of
charity. It’s important to remember to have fun
in business. If you don’t enjoy what you’re doing
then why are you doing it?
It’s a lot to organise and quite complicated
bringing everything together: co-ordinating the
logistics on the day, on top of the market research,
PR and advertising prior to the event. But if business
is about anything it’s adapting to changing
circumstances and thinking on your feet.
I’m a Sussex entrepreneur who left school
without any qualifications. I’ve put myself
through college, enjoyed a successful career
in sales and marketing with BT and now I’m
running two businesses whilst looking after my
twins at home and working in the office two days
a week. So I guess you could say that I like to do
things in twos. I did have plans for five Expos in
2016 but my wife reckons I’d be wise to stick with
two for now. She’s usually right. As told to LL
17th March, Lewes Town Hall 10-3pm, free entry
on the day. lewes@netxp.co.uk / netxp.co.uk
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