Luton small business owners praise 'invaluable' support from EU-funded project during lockdown

Founded by Matt Haley in 2013, video production company MHF Creative was proving to be a successful independent business with plenty of work to keep the small team busy.

However, once the pandemic hit and the UK went into lockdown, Matt and his co-director Ciara Haley found themselves facing challenges they hadn’t experienced before.

“Pre-Covid-19, our business was doing incredibly well and we had a large amount of clients in both the events and travel sector,” Matt said.

“We were lucky enough that we never had to seek out work, which in hindsight was very naïve and a big learning curve for us.

"We realised that our biggest problem was that people outside of these industries did not know we existed.”

Matt and Ciara sought help from the ALPHAS programme, funded by the European Union's regional development fund.

The programme is administered in Luton by the University of Bedfordshire, and it creates a network between colleges, universities and small businesses to target specific business problems.

Through ALPHAS, Matt and Ciara completed virtual training workshops in a variety of topics – including digital tools, leadership and strategic planning. They used this new-found knowledge to successfully bid for a grant in order to launch a new website.

“The ALPHAS project has enabled us to better understand the problems we were facing as a business and helped us focus on the best solution to resolve this,” Matt said.

“We have since engaged with a local marketing agency who are specifically working on improving our SEO presence, our digital footprint and our website.

"The funding provided by the project has also enabled us to work with a company specialising in lead generation, helping to get us in front of our target customers to increase awareness of our services.”

After completing the free support programme, Matt and Ciara decided to put their training into action by producing a promo video, in which they reflected on their experience of the ALPHAS project and the University of Bedfordshire’s efforts in supporting them.

Dr Nick Lancaster, from the University of Bedfordshire, said: “Making a video as a way of providing feedback to us is such a clever way to showcase the company. Clearly, MHF Creative has really taken on-board the ALPHAS strategic thinking message.

“We always relish receiving feedback from businesses and we are thrilled to hear Ciara and Matt have already seen results, but that doesn’t mean the relationship ends now – we can continue to offer help and support for the foreseeable future.”

The University of Bedfordshire’s innovation & enterprise services (IES) offers a number of resources and support for small and medium-sized businesses. To find out more, visit www.beds.ac.uk/ies/we-mean-business.