Extracare Business Challenge
This evening Interdirect added to its list of awards by winning the “Entrepreneur's award for the most innovative and creative Business Idea” in the ExtraCare challenge.
The ExtraCare Charitable Trust was formed in 1988 and currently operates 28 supported housing schemes and retirement villages throughout the greater Midlands area and the North. ExtraCare opened its Lovat Fields village in Milton Keynes (http://extracare.hcldev.co.uk/villages/villages/?id=2) in July 2007 and has been quick to engage the local community.
The ExtraCare Business Challenge was the latest such engagement and it involved awarding participating local businesses £50 donated the National Westminster Bank. Each recipient business was then tasked with growing their £50 into as large a sum as possible by any (legal) means.
Interdirect was proud to participate and it set up a pixel selling website (http://extracare.interdirect.co.uk/), whereby people are able to buy blocks of pixels and put adverts, pictures and logos into them. Each “advert” also links back to a website, thereby potentially driving traffic to that website.
It’s not an original idea, but it seems to be the first time that it has been used in such a context. Certainly it attracted the attention of the ExtraCare judges who thought it the most innovative idea of all of the 30 participating businesses.
In commenting on the award Nicholas Mann managing director of Interdirect said “I am very proud that Interdirect not only supported the Business Challenge, but also that we won the award for Entrepreneurship.”
Mann continued “However, in true ‘Oscars style’ I cannot take the credit for this award. Peter Treadaway, Sarah Malleson and John Bygrave from our team put in all of the hard work and deserve all of the credit. Also we all owe a huge vote of thanks to Sue Malleson of Taurus Public Relations who did a fantastic job of publicising our efforts, donating all of her time for free.”
In total the Business Challenge raised over £13,000 and Interdirect raised over £1,200 (the fourth largest amount).
