Inexplicably, both The Sun and The Daily Mail have chosen today to flag up their respective campaigns to support British business. Obviously, Smarta is delighted the national press feel so responsible for the welfare of the nation's small businesses - but we're taking them head to head. Read on for the 'save our small businesses' campaign class of the titans...

The Sun

Column inches: As well as having Alan Sugar in a Lord Kitchener-esque 'your country needs you' pose taking up half the front page, The Sun has devoted pages six, seven and eight, and a special eight-page pull-out to their cause. 10/10

Celebs: Alan Sugar is the Sun's commander-in-chief, but there's also an impressive endorsement from John Wright, national chairman of the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), who says he 'salutes' the paper's campaign. Mandelson and Cameron also voice their support. 9/10

Advice: The paper has surpassed itself: not only is there a seven-point manifesto bringing attention to such issues as deferring VAT and prompt payment, but there is also an open letter to Gordon Brown, 10 'Golden Rules' for small firms to survive the crunch, and advice on which banks are safest to invest in. Special patriot points for making the manifesto a pneumonic which spells 'British'. 8/10

Graphics: Union jacks ahoy. A little bit overdone, if we're honest. 3/10

Total: 29/40 - Plenty of column inches indicate a firm commitment to the cause. Well done, The Sun.

Daily Mail

Column inches: Points for the front page banner headline, but the small firms campaign gets a measly double-page spread inside. 5/10

Celebs: David Cameron has written a column - and that's it. Poor show. 4/10

Advice: Cameron's column is distinctly unhelpful, attacking Brown's 'frankly ridiculous' corporation tax, but an eight-part small business charter is meatier than The Sun's manifesto, with sober advice on what needs to be done to rescue downturn-ridden businesses. 8/10

Graphics: None. 0/10

Total: 17/40 - While the Mail's manifesto is solid, its unwillingness to devote space to the cause leaves us with a distinct feeling of commitment-phobia. Better luck next time...

If the effects of the recession have become too much for you, there's only one place to spend away your misery this week, and that's Westfield, the new shopping mall which opened in West London yesterday.With a car park bigger than Macclesfield and escalators that, if put end to end, are rumoured to be able to take you to Argentina and back, Westfield is massive - and when plans for it were announced five years ago, they made it look like the best idea anyone in West London had had since, well, ever.Local traders have voiced mixed opinions over the opening: on the one hand, there have been grumblings that the mall may drive trade away from smaller shops, while others have welcomed Westfield, saying it will drive new shoppers to an area which has never really been renowned for its shopping prowess.The timing could have been better: the grand opening of this temple of consumerism has come exactly a week after the British Retail Consortium released figures showing retailers are lookin at a 'tough' run-up to Christmas.The centre's businesses (Louis Vuitton and Mulberry number among the more high-end retailers) are reportedly doing everything in their power to get consumers interested - fashion shows and discounts and everything.A place like Westfield is a sort of microcosm of the UK's retail outlook as a whole - so it'll be interesting to see what its retailers do to deal with the effects of plummeting consumer confidence.

Congrats to huddle for becoming the only UK company to make it onto LinkedIn’s new applications platform launch. In fact, the only European company to make it, swimming alongside big fish such as Google and Amazon.LinkedIn (a business connections site) has over 29 million users worldwide, so this is a major opportunity for Andy McLoughlin and the guys at huddle. It looks set to increase their userbase exponentially.If you don’t know huddle yet, it’s an online project management facility that uses social networking principles to allow groups of people to edit, store, arrange and collaborate on documents online.We spoke to Andy and Zuzanna Pasierbinska from huddle last night at the great Silicon Stilettos meet-up in London, and both seemed – perhaps predictably – elated. And exhausted, having been on the go for around two sleepless days by that point. “It’s just all happened really quickly,” said the lovely Andy, “There’s been so much going on.”But I’m sure the work hard play hard ethic will start balancing out tonight as the weekend draws nigh.

Having spent the last few months squatting in various sister companies' offices, Smarta finally made it into its new home last week, and is marking its one-week anniversary in its new office with a little celebration.We're actually feeling a bit smug about the whole thing: the move, you'll be glad to know, went swimmingly, and we are now comfortably ensconsed in our little sixth-floor paradise, known to friends as Smarta Towers.As newly-annointed office move experts, we thought we'd create a step-by-step guide to the perfect office move...

• Keep it simpleWe managed to avoid too many cooks spoiling the broth by making sure one person was in charge of the move
• Minimise costsThink about it carefully: do you need a professional removal company, or can you rope in some of your employees to help? Are you really going to need six spare desks?
• Don't move in until it's readyTo minimise downtime, hold off from moving your staff until the office is absolutely ready - and that includes measures such as phones and wi-fi.
• Stagger the moveStave off a mad rush for the best desks by staggering the move - we sent the management over first, followed by the rest of the company.
• Stagger deliveriesEven though it's always nice to have a queue of delivery men outside your front door, it's not really conducive to productivity - so leave any non-essential deliveries until after you've settled in.

Photo by our lovely in-house photographer, Meriem.

Big up former Apprentice winner Michelle 'Dewbs' Dewberry, who has taken time out from conspiring with our friends to make fun of Smarta to start her new business, Chiconomise.The weekly newsletter, launched with ex-Glamour.com editor Phoebe Frangoul, aims to offer cash-strapped recession victims tips on the 'best sales, happy hours, freebies, discounts and buy-one-get-one-free-deals near you', according to a piece in The Sunday Times."Before, me and my mates would have gone to Harvey Nicks for a martini after work but, at £14 a pop, we don't want to do that any more," she told the paper on Sunday.And we've heard on the grapevine that the venture has had so much media attention, Mich has had to put her trip to South America on hold.Great to see the recession rekindling some of that good ol' British wartime spirit...

Interesting piece by BBC business reporter Anthony Reuben last week, talking about how pound shops deal with inflation.Apparently, they're finding it increasingly difficult to stick to their original idea - ie. everything for a pound. Some are dealing with it by subtly altering the wording of their tagline, 'everything at least £1' (not unlike the pricing structure at Harrods); while others are more determined to keep to the original idea.Reuben makes a good point. Shops like Poundland and 99p Stores are well positioned to cash in on the so-called Aldi effect, but with interest rates expected to drop to 2.5% (0% has been suggested, but let's not go nuts), inflation is set to rocket.Other retailers will be in a similar situation: how does, for example, a local bakery faced with rising grain prices continue to give its customers value for money without losing out?One of the tactics pound shops have adopted is taking a hard line with suppliers. "Often a supplier will say he can't do anything on the price and I'll say, I can't buy it - it's quite simple," says Hussein Lalani, commercial director of 99p Stores. "He'll go away and think about it and come back and do a deal."Negotiating strict payment terms with your suppliers will also help - keeping your cash flow positive will mean you won't have to pass any of your suppliers' financial problems on to customers.Your customers will appreciate it if you manage to hang on to the values you began with at a time when nothing else seems concrete. And as the piece points out, 'everything is £1.05' doesn't quite have the same ring to it, does it?Image by zawtowers @ flickr.

We at smarta have recently discovered springwise.com, and feel it only fair to recommend it to all of you.The site picks the most innovative, forward-thinking and sometimes just plain zappy new business ideas that it has come across over the previous week, and gives quick summaries of around 20 of them. (They’ve got 8,000 spotters across the globe.) If you’re a real devotee, as we all are here, you can get it all digested into a handy once-a-week newsletter.My personal faves of this week’s round-up include Sarah's Smash Stack, where you pay to throw plates, glass flowers, and, hell, anything you want at a big steel wall. (There’s a “corkage” fee if your bring your own.) Also new concept tikitag, who is aiming to bring offline objects into the online world by using specially developed stickers for objects that correspond to online apps. Meaning, for example, that an online children’s story could feature an offline teddy-bear, or that visitors to a gallery could wave their mobile in front of a painting with a tikitag sticker on it and instantly receive info on the artist. And Payless ShoeSource, who’s making green shoes for less than US $30 – very handy (or... footy...).

Sod this macabre talk of plunging stock markets and wobbly currencies - it's Friday, and anyway, there are far more important topics we should be concentrating on: namely, the ongoing coverage of the desperate plight of British business from that shining paradigm of media conscience, The Sun.Today, it's opted for the grass-roots approach and gone to the people, finding out where the real problems are, and presenting the results in a sort of Dear-Deirdre-but-a-bit-less-homely agony aunt-type layout, where the Godfather of British business, Sir Alan Sugar, imparts his wisdom to the massesContinuing our up-to-the-minute coverage of the newspaper's campaign, Smarta has picked Suralan's best bits.On too much red tape..."Regulation should not be used as an excuse by anybody in business. Regulations are an occupational hazard and, like everything else, they have to be overcome. Regulations change all the time and we need to conform to different requests. It is not an excuse."On competing with big business..."Some businesses offer the personal touch, while giant organisations are cold and clinical. Certain shops such as food and grocery stores will obviously suffer in the credit crunch and, I agree, it is tough for the small shops to survive."On staying afloat..."You have to reduce your bills, keep costs under control and hold on."Ignore Suralan's advice at your peril - and stay tuned for more of Smarta's coverage of The Sun's coverage of the plight of British business.Photo by ....Tim.

New figures revealed today by the Office for National Statistics have confirmed what business owners on high streets across the country already knew: retail sales are falling.According to the figures, sales growth during the three months to September was at its slowest since 2006, while overall, sales have dropped by 0.4%.Is sales the main issue retailers need to be worrying about, though? We interviewed Laura Tenison, founder of maternity and babywear retailer Jojo Maman Bébé, last week – and she said her sales had actually risen.“My biggest concern is not sales – our sales are very, very healthy,” she said. “One thing that does happen in a recession is people get made redundant and when they get made redundant they think well, I was a career girl but now’s a good time to have a baby so actually, traditionally, the birth rate goes up a bit in a recession.”Laura made the point that instead of concentrating on sales, retailers should be worrying about keeping their profit margins high – and that means keeping costs low.“We’ve got to look at the worst case scenario: How much of our stock are we forward buying? Could we limit our risk by committing to 2,000 metres of fabric, but only making up 500 pieces of stock? Because if that style doesn’t sell as well as predicted, then we’ve only committed to the value of the fabric stock and not the make-up. These are the types of things that you do need to spend more time on.”Retailers need to adopt the mantra of ‘little and often’ to prevent themselves from being caught short at a time when a good cashflow is more crucial than ever. To paraphrase an oft-quoted idiom: look after the margins, and the sales will look after themselves.

Interesting article on guardian.co.uk today to promote its new Greenwash column. The aim of the column is to reveal all the companies and policies that masquerade as eco-friendly by using an ingeniously contrived veil of pure BS.Cases in point: Virgin Trains, who claims to produce 76% less carbon dioxide than the peculiarly non-specific “cars and domestic flights”. Or Manchester airport, who strove to be completely carbon neutral – oh, apart from the flights coming in and out - although I’m sure they don’t do much damage. And my personal favourite, Fiji Water, whose example is best put in the words of the article’s author, Fred Pearce:“And what are we to make of Fiji Water's claims to be cutting the carbon footprint of its water by 25% and offsetting the rest? ‘Every drop is green,’ it says. But isn't the whole idea of bottling water on a remote South Pacific island and shipping it to your dinner table just a tiny bit barmy?”Which leads to the crux of the Guardian’s dilemma: “Can we shop our way to sustainability?... Or are our own consumer lifestyles, suffused in greenwash, the problem?”So is there any reay way to guarantee green-credentials - as a consumer or as a business-owner? Or is it all one big scam? What are we to do?From a buyer’s point of view, being more cynical about and challenging sellers about green claims is a small but positive step.And for manufacturers, or indeed anyone with recyclable waste, making sure it’s going to the right place should help too. Perhaps the most worrying point the article makes is about the recycling cowboys. These are the people who claim to recycle your old stuff but use very, very unsavoury processes to do it. Taking electrical goods off companies’ hands, for example, then getting all the bits stripped and dunked in acid by child labourers in third world countries.With new media attention focusing on false claims to green credibility, it might just pay to make sure your business is doing the right thing for real.(Image: ~~zorro~~ at flickr)