How Glawning Won Theo Paphitis’ Small Business Sunday
We’ll never forget the moment we got the notification that Glawning had been selected as a winner on Small Business Sunday (#SBS) by Theo Paphitis. It was one of those milestones that truly helped put our business on the map.
What is Small Business Sunday?
If you're wondering what we’re on about, Small Business Sunday is a weekly initiative started by Theo Paphitis — best known from Dragon’s Den — to support UK small businesses via social media. Businesses enter by commenting and tagging Theo Paphitis under his weekly ‘#SBS is Open’ post on X, Instagram and Linkedin between 5.00-7.30pm every Sunday.
Each Monday night, Theo selects six standout businesses and gives them a retweet to his large audience, which offers huge visibility, new followers, and often, increased customer interest.
Our #SBS Moment
The advice is to just post/comment once in each weekly time slot, and if you’re not chosen, don’t despair, try again. Resilience is important as an entrepreneur after all, right? We’d been doing it religiously for a while and gave up but back in November 2020, decided to give it another go and half heartedly tweeted Theo about what makes our Glawning glamping products so unique and why we love what we do (because they're camping game-changers and because we are the campers that we created them for of course!).
Then on Monday evening — boom. Theo had retweeted us, and suddenly our Twitter notifications were blowing up. It felt like someone had turned the spotlight on us overnight. Our follower count jumped, people started asking about our products, and we even gained local press attention thanks to it.
The Real Highlight: Meeting Theo in Birmingham
The SBS experience didn’t stop at a retweet. As part of the #SBS community, every winning business gets an invite to meet Theo Paphitis in person at the annual #SBS event in Birmingham to collect their official certificate. Walking into that massive room of fellow small business winners — all hustling and building something they truly believed in — was so inspiring. The goody bags and slap up lunch provided (all free of charge) are definitely worth writing home about too!
Getting to shake hands with Theo and receive this certificate made it real. It wasn’t just a retweet — it was validation from someone whose career we’ve admired for years as we're avid Dragon's Den fans. The event was also an incredible networking opportunity, with speakers, partners, and business owners sharing advice and connections.
Why It Mattered for Glawning
Winning #SBS wasn’t a one-off publicity spike — it was a game changer:
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We saw lasting social media growth from Theo’s initial retweet.
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It opened doors to conversations, collaborations and increased awareness of what we do.
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It connected us with a community of small-business owners all supporting each other.
- As a winning business you get invited back EVERY SINGLE YEAR to the SBS event at the ICC in Birmingham, where you get a full day of networking, inspirational (often quite famous) speakers, a delicious lunch and an amazing goody bag, all for free!
Tips If You Want to Enter #SBS
If you’re a small business owner thinking about trying it yourself, here’s what works:
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Follow @TheoPaphitis on X, Instagram or LinkedIn.
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Craft a genuine, engaging written pitch about your business explaining why you and your business deserve to be an #SBS winner.
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Enter by commenting and tagging Theo Paphitis under his weekly ‘#SBS is Open’ post on X, Instagram and Linkedin between 5.00-7.30 PM every Sunday.
Every Monday night at 8pm, Theo announces his favourite lucky six who are then re-tweeted or re-posted. As he has a large social media following, this provides a massive boost to the chosen winners. They also gain access to the above-mentioned network of like-minded small and micro businesses in the UK.
It’s competitive, but keep trying as the exposure is absolutely worth it — and even if you don’t win, trying is a great exercise in clarity about what your business stands for.
Best of luck!
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