by Damon Scott

The local chamber has enjoyed a record number of new members recently with 12 in just a two-week period which is fantastic as we continue our mission to build the business community in Dunbartonshire.

The number of events the chamber has been involved with has made a big difference as events enable us to connect with lots more businesses at one time.

We were well represented at Business Weeks in both West Dunbartonshire and East Dunbartonshire and made some really good quality contacts over these two weeks.

We have also opened up some of our events to non-members to give them an insight into what the chamber is all about and the benefits it can bring to them and, invariably, we find that most of those that attend take up membership.

We’ve been continuing to work hard to build a real business community across Dunbartonshire and businesses have responded well to the networking opportunities we build in to all of our events.

The Business Breakfast Club series has been particularly successful and we had our busiest session last week with more than 30 businesses connecting with each other.

As a result we are looking to roll-out more of these events across Dunbartonshire.

Knowledge transfer events such as GDPR and LinkedIn seminars have also proved really popular as have our showcase events where businesses play host to other members and share their business journey.

We launched our Dunbartonshire Women in Business programme last year and that has been very well supported too.

In addition, the profile of the chamber has really been building over the last 18 months with more than 1,300 followers on Twitter and some great press coverage.

Some members are more interested in the built-in benefits the chamber offers such as our legal and HR services and the wide range of member rewards such as 66 per cent off AA breakdown cover.

We are always ready to connect with new businesses wanting to find out more and happy for them to come along to one of our events as our guest to find out more.