ADVERTISER.COM.AU TUESDAY JULY 21 2015 BUSINESS JOURNAL 29

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“We were lucky enough towork with a landlord whichunderstood the vision andunderstood what could beachieved by trying somethingnew,’’ Ms Jacobs said.

Renew Adelaide is a not for

profit organisation with fund-ing support from the StateGovernment, Renewal SA andthe Adelaide City Council.

It has also recently placed anumber of new tenants in To-pham Mall including a florist,

START-UP: Bec Platt has benefited from Renew Adelaide. Picture: TOM HUNTLEY

bagel shop and cafe Booknookand Bean. It also supportsHart’s Collective – a retail, foodand art space in Port Adelaide –and the Hungry Hippo BoardGame Cafe on Hindley St.cameron.england@news.com.au

RENEW Adelaide has helpedturn five creative ideas intoburgeoning businesses basedin Regent Arcade as part of itscollaboration with the shop-ping strip.

One year on from RenewAdelaide forming a partner-ship with Regent Arcade man-agement, most of thebusinesses which signed rent-free leases have gone on to signcommercial leases.

Renew Adelaide aims to re-vitalise public spaces by facili-tating rolling 30-day, rent-freeleases for creative, start-upbusinesses in empty tenancies.

The idea is to allow entre-preneurs to test their businessmodel while activating spaceswhich were between payingtenants.

The Regent Arcade pro-gram has been very successful,with five of the original sevenbusinesses taking up a com-mercial lease.

Another two shops– a beauty/bodycare shop and astationery shop– have also re-cently filled va-cancies on theRenew Adelaidemodel and the va-cancy rate in the ar-cade has fallen sharply,with three new commercialleases also signed within fourmonths of the Renew programstarting.

Just one of the 40 groundfloor retail tenancies is nowempty, down from 10 last year.

George Ginos from theGinos Group, which owns Re-gent Arcade, said the tenancymix had also diversified.

“Consumers have respond-ed to this in such a favourableway that many of the projectshave converted to commercialleases, which is a great outcomenot only for Regent Arcade butfor these start-up businessesand the Renew Adelaide in-itiative,’’ Mr Ginos said.

“Given that these are all up-and-coming Adelaide entre-preneurs it’s fantastic to be

There is life after company failures

UP to 20 jobs have been savedat a Clare-based shed manu-facturer after administratorsreturned control of the com-pany to its directors yesterday.

IKCSheds entered into vol-untary administration in May,just a month after it was con-victed and fined $10,000 pluscosts over a 2012 incident thatsaw a worker fall 6m through aroof.

Despite the company’s $2.1million in unsecured debts, ithad a pending contract worthabout the same amount andultimately this is what saved it.

It is understood that thecompany, which was estab-lished more than three decadesago, has a full order book untilat least February 2016 withwork in the pipeline valued at$3.2 million.

“The company should nowhave sufficient funds to pay alloutstanding superannuation

entitlements for its 20 employ-ees and has reached agree-ment to pay outstandingcreditors around 25c in thedollar,” said Stuart Otway ofadministrators BRI Ferrier.

This is not the first timeIKCSheds has encounteredtrouble. According to the ASICwebsite, an application for thecompany to be wound up wasmade by the WorkCover Cor-poration of South Australia inOctober 2012 and again inJanuary 2014.

Meanwhile, BRI Ferrier hasachieved another successfulturnaround, with nine jobssaved after Adelaide-basedMain Industrial Electricalcame out of voluntary admin-istration last week. LikeIKCSheds, Main IndustrialElectrical had debts totalling$2.1 million and was about toenter liquidation when BRIFerrier took control in April.

LUKE GRIFFITHS

Renew-ed approach has CBD arcade abuzz againCAMERON ENGLAND

Agreement to pay creditors around 25c

in the dollarS T U A R T O T W AY

able to showcase local talent inRegent Arcade.

“We could see the immedi-ate appeal of working withRenew Adelaide as an interimmeasure to help activate thearcade. That many of the pro-jects who started out at RegentArcade have since convertedto commercial lease terms hasbeen an additional benefit ofour partnership with RenewAdelaide.’’

Bec Platt, 29, who owns gift-ware and creative productsstore Have You Met Charlie,said being able to set up in Re-gent Arcade transformed thebusiness run by herself and apartner from a market stallinto a full-time operation.

“We try and support localand independent designers, wehave art, jewellery, crafts,prints body products, a rangeof things like that.

“We started out with Renewin May last year and moved intothis space after a month. We’ve been doing really well and we’re

really happy with it.“It would never have-

happened withoutRenew.’’

Ms Platt, a graphicdesigner, said she andher business partner

had been selling prod-ucts through markets

but Renew gave them achance to develop a more es-tablished business.

Sarah Rothe, 31, who runsSarah Rothe Jewellery, sells arange of locally-produced jew-ellery and some craft products.

“The business is mainlycontemporary jewellery but wealso combine giftware andhandmade products from localSouth Australian artists.

“The Renew project hasgiven me the opportunity tohave a retail space which Iwouldn’t have been able to bymyself . . . it is actually quitebeneficial and profitable hav-ing a storefront.’’

Renew Adelaide chiefexecutive Lily Jacobs said theGinos Group was proactiveabout collaborating and theend result was a more vibrantpublic space.

Itwould never

have happenedwithout Renew

As one door closes, new ones open.Salisbury.It makes good business sense.salisburybusiness.com.au