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Geneva and the World Trade Organisation

If you’ve been following me on social media it would have been hard to miss the amazing day I had last Thursday! Speaking at the World Trade Organisation and meeting other amazing micro businesswomen and then chilling by lake Geneva! I think we can all agree that’s a day and a half!

We started with an introduction from Angela Steen Director of Etsy Advocacy and then we all said our piece.

First up was Emma Barnes, of Wild Fawn Jewellery, she spoke about space constraints especially living in London, and issues with delivery.

Second was Elodie Fagot, of Tea Heritage based in Lyon, France. Elodie has several employees so spoke about that, as well as about how difficult it was to get started, and about copyright.

I was up third, as the only one not in a major city I spoke a bit about how small an investment micro businesses are and how they could turn a deprived area like the Valleys around easier and more sustainably then trying to find big factories to come to the area; but that politicians aren’t all that interested since we’re not headline material! I also spoke about my biggest hurdles to starting up, cash flow, and space.

And last but not least we had Timea Gremsperger, of MightyVintage based in Berlin, she spoke about the punitive and difficult bureaucracy that she has come up against and made me happy to be setting up in the UK not Germany!

We were speaking in a huge room with rows of desks with microphones and ear pieces, and while we all spoke in English there were translators working in a booth above us as we spoke, so non English speakers could be involved, it was quite impressive how seamless the translation side was!

Then we had a Q&A which went really well, we got engaged and sensible questions, and could have kept going but the speakers for the next session needed the room! All in all I think it went really well, it was a pity that we had quite a low turn out for our talk, but then I think it made our main point which was please please policy makers and people in power, remember we exist, bear us in mind when you’re making decisions that will effect us!

We might be small but we are many and we are growing in numbers and together we can be very very powerful!

So here’s a few photos of the WTO and of the afternoon in Geneva.

 

 

Also still time to sign up for my “Get your creative business online”  workshop this Saturday in Caerphilly as part of Octobers Etsy Educators events. Click here for details

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