A word from the Wigan Business Awards organisers
There are brilliant businesses across Wigan and Leigh that we all drive past every day without having the faintest idea what happens behind the front doors.
Running the Wigan Business Awards gives us a slightly unusual view of those businesses, because every year we get to read the stories most people never hear.
A company name you recognise suddenly becomes a team employing dozens of local people. A business you have passed hundreds of times turns out to be working with customers across the UK. Somebody who tells us they are “just getting on with it” has actually spent the last year creating jobs, investing in their team, taking on apprentices or growing through an incredibly difficult market.
Quite often, we find ourselves asking the same question.
How did we not know this?
Businesses Don’t Always See What We See
One thing we have learned over the years is that businesses are often much better at doing the work than talking about it.
When you are inside your business every day, growth happens gradually. New people join. Contracts get bigger. Someone progresses through the team. You invest in something new. You solve another problem and move on to the next one.
It becomes normal to you.
Then somebody asks what you have achieved over the last 12 months and suddenly you have to stop and think about it.
We see this constantly through the Awards. Businesses worry that they will not have enough to say, then start pulling together the evidence and realise just how much has happened!
That is one of the reasons we believe being part of the process matters, regardless of what happens on Awards night.
Small Businesses Are Doing a Lot of the Heavy Lifting
The word “small” can be misleading too.
UK Government figures show that businesses employing fewer than 50 people account for more than 99% of the UK’s private sector business population, and around 95% are micro businesses employing fewer than 10 people.
When medium-sized businesses are included, SMEs employ around 16.9 million people, representing 60% of private sector employment.
So those businesses sitting on industrial estates, high streets and business parks across the borough are part of something economically huge.
They create jobs, spend money, train people and contribute to the places around them.
Yet many of them remain largely unknown outside their own customers and networks.
Awards Give Businesses a Reason to Stop
Of course, people enter awards because they would like to win.
We would be slightly worried if they didn’t!
But there is a lot of value in stopping long enough to look properly at what you have built.
What changed this year? What are you most proud of? What difference did an investment make? How has somebody in the team progressed? What did you get through that you thought might beat you at the time?
Those questions often reveal a much bigger story than the business owner expected.
And when those stories are shared, other people start to understand what is happening inside businesses they may previously have known only by name.
You Cannot Support Businesses You Don’t Know Exist
We talk a lot about supporting local businesses, using local suppliers and keeping money within the local economy.
But first, we have to know what is here.
That is another reason the Wigan Business Awards exists.
It gives businesses a reason to tell their stories and gives the wider borough an opportunity to discover them.
A finalist might become somebody’s next supplier. Two businesses might meet and collaborate. Someone might see an employer they want to work for. A business owner might discover that the service they have been sourcing elsewhere has been available five miles down the road all along.
Those connections are happening now, in real life, with Wigan Business Awards as the catalyst.
Our 2026 Finalists
Over the next few weeks, we will start meeting this year’s finalists properly through the interview process.
We already know from their entries that there are some brilliant stories behind those business names.
Some you will recognise immediately.
Others you might have driven past a hundred times, and that is one of the reasons we keep doing this.
The Wigan Business Awards give us an excuse to open the doors, ask the questions and find out what is actually going on inside the businesses around us.
Very often, the answer is far more impressive than anybody outside knew.
Want to know who’s behind the businesses you pass every day?
Meet the Wigan Business Awards 2026 finalists and discover some of the people, teams and businesses doing brilliant things across the borough.
View the full finalist list here >> https://wiganbusinessawards.co.uk/wigan-business-awards-2026-finalists/
