Business Matters
The UK's largest distributed monthly business magazine. Since 1986, the most trusted brand in the SME space — 1m+ monthly online readers, a daily news platform and a 90,000-strong newsletter list.
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About Trends Research
Built on the UK's largest engaged audience of small business owners.
We are the specialist market research arm of Capital Business Media Group — the publisher behind Business Matters, the UK's largest SME magazine. That gives us something competitors cannot replicate at any price: a continuously refreshed, engaged, and trusted relationship with hundreds of thousands of UK SME decision-makers.
The story
Specialist UK SME research, since the SME conversation began.
The SME market is not the consumer market on a smaller scale. It has its own decision-making rhythms, its own pressures, its own language — and most generalist research panels simply cannot engage SME owners at scale or with credibility.
Trends Research exists because Capital Business Media Group has spent four decades earning that credibility. Through Business Matters magazine and its sister titles, the group reaches over a million UK SME readers every month — a base from which we recruit, engage and re-engage the most useful research panel in the UK SME space.
For corporates, that means strategic data with the response volumes and cross-cuts to defend. For PR agencies, it means surveys with the response credibility national newsrooms publish without hesitation.
We treat survey respondents like readers, not data points. They've trusted us for decades through Business Matters — and that trust is the single reason our response volumes and data quality sit where they do. — Claire Oakley, Managing Director
Our parent group
Part of Capital Business Media Group.
Capital Business Media is a specialist B2B media and events business with offices in London, Ireland and New York. The group's owned and published titles cover the audiences that matter to anyone selling to, regulating or reporting on UK SMEs.
Sector-specialist B2B brands
Fund Manager Today, Travelling for Business, EV Powered, Not Ltd, Stay & Improve, Property Portfolio Investor — each engaging a specialist B2B audience we can survey alongside the core SME panel.
CBM divisions ↗Trends Research
The group's specialist research division — building the largest UK SME data set available to any UK research company, and turning it into insight for brands, agencies and government.
Our methodology
The team
Senior leadership with deep SME and research credentials.
A small senior team, each with a long track record in UK SME research, journalism or analytics. You'll work with the people whose names appear here — not handed off to an account layer.
Richard Alvin
Executive Chairman
Multi-award-winning founder of Capital Business Media Group and one of the UK's leading specialists on the small and medium business sector. A regular national media commentator on SME policy and economics.
Claire Oakley
Managing Director
Over 20 years of business research experience, the last five driving Trends Research to lead the UK SME research space. Owns delivery and client outcomes across every project.
Julia Darby
Client Manager
MBA-qualified, with a career built inside UK SME business research. Brings deep specialist knowledge to client briefs, ensuring survey design genuinely answers the strategic question.
Sarah Hamblin
Research Analyst
12+ years of Market Research Association-accredited quantitative experience, providing the depth of field data that gives clients statistically robust, media-grade insight.
What you can expect from us
How we work with clients.
Specialism, not generalism
We don't pretend to be experts in B2C household goods or rolling consumer trackers. UK SMEs are the whole job — which is why our questionnaire design, cross-cuts and analyst commentary are sharper than a generalist agency's would be.
Senior people on every project
You get our senior team across briefing, design and reporting. Junior support exists, but it's never the face of the project. Your strategic question deserves senior research thinking.
Direct, plain language
Reports written for executives and journalists, not for other researchers. Every chart has a headline, every data point has a "so what", every report has a single-page summary.