YBI Member in Sweden holds annual Enterprise Fair

NyföretagarCentrum, Youth Business International (YBI) member in Sweden, recently held their annual Enterprise Fair from 8-10 November in Stockholm. The key themes for this year’s event were mentoring, migrants and e-commerce.

This is really the place to be if you are thinking of starting, have just started or have been running your business for a while. NyföretagarCentrum’s Enterprise Fair has a vibrant atmosphere with people from all over the country gathering to participate in conversations and 200 seminars about entrepreneurship. 6,400 participants took the opportunity to meet with organisations, companies and authorities to get help and inspiration on their entrepreneurial journey. The broad range of people fills the three days with an interesting mix of perspectives, a feature highlighted on the stage where attendees turned to previous collaborators who could be inspiring role models.

During the event, the Mentor of the Year was awarded, an informative mentoring seminar was delivered and, as always, twelve of NyföretagarCentrum’s dedicated mentors gave three hours of their time so visitors to the fair could “borrow” a mentor for about twenty minutes to get a glimpse of what mentoring is all about.

There were other awards given out, including ‘Young Entrepreneur of the Year’, a collaboration between Citi Foundation, Fortnox and NyföretagarCentrum. Three very worthy finalists were shortlisted but in the end, the 2018 Entrepreneur of the Year was awarded to the partnership of William Eriksson and Philip Robertsson, two twenty-year old men from Luleå (in the very north of Sweden) who run a used car business, Eriksson & Robertsson Bil.

Philip says about winning the award:

”We were really excited and honoured to be chosen as Young Entrepreneur of the Year. To compete with the other finalists was really tough! Used cars probably isn’t the first thing you think about in connection to successful companies. But using our experience, interest and knowledge alongside having good support from NyföretagarCentrum and our mentor, Eriksson & Robertsson has become a success. We work solely with used cars and our turnover in 2017 was nearly €1.66 million with a profit margin of almost 10%. By the looks of it 2018 will be even better.”

Therese Kaeck, Head of Mentoring at NyföretagarCentrum, praised the event:

 “All in all, this is three intense days with lots of meetings. However, it is three days you look forward to all year since nothing is as inspiring and fun as meeting the people we actually get to help!”