Ultimate Events

A corporate events company run by Linda Renton and Arthur McIvor.

It helps that Ultimate Events - a two-person business based in St Andrew Square - has a well-known name on board. And when the famous name has enormous experience in the field, they'd hope they couldn't fail. As a former Miss Scotland, Linda Renton is bound to know a good corporate bash when she sees one. After years of doing the rounds on the social circuit, making personal appearances, attending business dinners and as one of the Tennent's "lager lovelies", she can rightly see herself as an expert on what gives an event what she calls "that wow factor".

The Executive's figures show only 35% of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Scotland are not sole traders - and it is these smaller, independent companies that are currently doing well. The number of firms employing between 50 and 249 employees fell last year from 3415 to 3345 and it was only the burgeoning number of flourishing small companies that kept the business growth rate in the black. A hospitality events firm, Ms Renton's Ultimate Events organises packages for clients keen to impress at functions, mainly in Scotland but also at other venues in the UK. Ms Renton and her business partner Arthur McIvor say the company, which hosted its first event in May, is more than two months ahead of its business plan - and has already had repeat business from satisfied customers.

The pair decided to go into business together after Mr McIvor, the best friend of Ms Renton's husband, left his job in corporate sales and marketing at the Royal Mail. They started planning the business around a year ago, but only got it up and running in February. With both having a heavy financial investment in the company, the entrepreneurial duo are determined to make it work and are already looking towards expansion.

"We started off planning to stick to packages - to gigs, sporting events and so on, but we have also already been asked to organise incentive days for one company, so that is another aspect of events we might look more at," says Mr McIvor. "That will probably be along the lines of white water rafting, paintball and so on - team-building sorts of things. "Some companies don't have clients they want to take out and we want to get them involved too." He adds: "We are planning to use other staff occasionally. "Linda has contacts all over the country, so if there's an event somewhere that we just can't be at, we have a bank of people to call on." Ms Renton says: "We're not planning on taking on any more permanent employees at the moment, we'll just see how it goes for now."

Apart from her celebrity status, Ms Renton says it is the personal touch that makes her company stand out from the crowd. Ultimate Events says it can provide bespoke packages for clients, mainly youthful industries such as advertising and recruitment firms, and it insists on seeing each event through to the end of the night. "A lot of the bigger companies sell packages they have already set up, whereas we like to sit down with our clients and see what it is they want and what they want to achieve from the evening," says Mr McIvor.

Ms Renton adds: "I like to make sure every detail is right and I even stay to make sure everybody gets safely home at the end of the evening. It means the client can totally relax and enjoy themselves." LAST month, the company hosted a package to see Neil Diamond at the SECC in Glasgow, including a champagne reception, a limousine and a Neil Diamond goodie bag for each concert-goer, complete with a CD of the great man himself. "It's all these little extra touches that make the difference," says Ms Renton. Last month, an umbrella group called Unique Venues of Edinburgh (UVE) was launched to promote a range of Edinburgh's top events venues under one name.

Including the Castle, Concorde and the Royal Yacht Britannia, the marketing group would appear to be a force to contend with, but Ultimate Events are confident they can find a niche in the Scottish market. "We have had a few people from Edinburgh and some from Glasgow," says Mr McIvor. "But we have also had interest from companies down south as well who want to do something different and Edinburgh is a good place for them to do that. "There just didn't seem to be a company that operated exactly like this. We saw a gap in the market and decided to go for it." He adds: "It's good for them to have a contact up here that knows the area and can give advice on where to go to eat and what else they can do. "We have a lot of contacts in companies and a lot of our business will be from word of mouth."

The company offers a range of options, from concerts - including last night's U2 gig in Glasgow - to sports events such as Musselburgh Races and the Open Golf Championships and even the Military Tattoo, complete with meal in a private restaurant on the Royal Mile. "We can arrange different things, from something very impressive to much more relaxed events, such as when we took a group to the Oasis gig in the Usher Hall. "That was more a meal and a few drinks first, much more of a boys' night out."

Ms Renton, who won the title of Miss Scotland in 1983 after becoming the Evening News Holiday Queen a year earlier, started a career in events and hospitality off the back of her earlier work. "It all started from there," says Ms Renton, now 45. "After that, I worked for a lot of different advertising and marketing companies - doing similar things to what we're doing now, but this is our own company, which makes a huge difference. "It's something I have always thought I would do eventually, to run my own company."

But she says her 20-year-old fame probably doesn't have too much of an effect on the majority of her younger clients. She says: "My neighbour was talking to a couple of Miss Scotlands at a hospitality event the other day and told them he lived next door to me, but they'd never heard of me before. The frightening thing is, they were probably about 17 and hadn't even been born when I became Miss Scotland. It was a long time ago now."