Cornwall in numbers

25,000 independent businesses. One county. Imagine them working together.

Cornwall is one of the most entrepreneurial places in Britain. Almost every business here is small, locally rooted and run by people you can actually meet. These are the numbers behind that, and what could happen if they pulled in the same direction.

Registered enterprises

Official 2025 business count for Cornwall

Micro businesses

0 to 9 employees, 88.7% of all enterprises

Micro plus small

98.5% of every registered Cornwall business

Business premises

Local units, shops, workshops and sites

Self employed people

14.6% of the workforce

Business size

98.5% of Cornwall trades small

Only 65 large businesses operate in the county. Everything else is micro or small, which means the Cornish economy is not built on head offices. It is built on kitchens, workshops, boats, studios, vans and front rooms.

Micro (0 to 9)22,470 · 88.7%
Small (10 to 49)2,485 · 9.8%
Medium (50 to 249)325 · 1.3%
Large (250+)65 · 0.3%

Premises

29,715 places you can walk into

There are more premises than enterprises because one business can run several sites: a bakery with five shops, a farm with a cafe and a campsite, a brewery with three taprooms. Every one of those is a doorway into the local economy.

Each square is roughly 500 premises. Gold squares are the extra sites run by businesses that operate in more than one place.

Self employment

Cornwall works for itself, at over 1.5 times the national rate

Around 57,600 people in Cornwall are self employed. That is 14.6% of the workforce against 9.3% across Great Britain.

Cornwall14.6%

Great Britain9.3%

Addressable market

Where those businesses sit

An indicative split of the roughly 25,000 micro and small enterprises into the categories this platform covers. Treat these as working estimates for planning, not official statistics, and refine them town by town as listings are verified.

Trades and construction
19%
≈4,741 businesses
Professional and business services
16%
≈3,993 businesses
Hospitality, food and drink
13%
≈3,244 businesses
Retail and shops
11%
≈2,745 businesses
Accommodation and stays
9%
≈2,246 businesses
Makers, artisans and creative
8%
≈1,996 businesses
Agriculture, fishing and producers
8%
≈1,996 businesses
Wellbeing, health and care
7%
≈1,747 businesses
Attractions, outdoor and activities
5%
≈1,248 businesses
Transport, marine and other
4%
≈998 businesses

The compound effect

What happens when 25,000 independents stop competing alone

Individually a micro business has a small voice, a small budget and no spare hours. Together they are the largest marketing network, referral engine and buying group in Cornwall. The maths changes completely.

monthly organic reach

Shared audiences

If 5,000 independents each share one another's stories to an average audience of 800 followers, that is a reach of four million impressions a month without a penny of ad spend.

1.3m

referrals a year

Cross referral

A cafe sends guests to a potter, the potter sends visitors to a farm shop, the farm shop recommends a retreat. One referral a week per business turns into 1.3 million warm introductions a year across 25,000 firms.

£3.30

stays local per £10 vs £1 with chains

Local spend multiplier

Money spent with an independent keeps far more value in the county than the same money spent with a national chain. Shifting ten pounds a week per household toward local firms moves hundreds of millions through Cornish tills.

15 to 30%

typical group buying saving

Shared cost base

Group buying on packaging, insurance, delivery, photography and software gives micro businesses the same unit costs a large chain enjoys, without losing independence.

22,470

micro firms with no back office

Skills and time

Most micro businesses are one or two people doing everything. A network where members swap an hour of accounting for an hour of design turns lonely work into shared capacity.

12 months

trading, not five

Seasonality smoothing

Cornwall's visitor economy peaks hard and drops fast. Coordinated off season events, resident offers and cross promotion spread trade into the quiet months.

The loop

How cross pollination actually works

1
Get listed
A business joins the directory with real photos, hours and a story.
2
Get found
Locals and visitors search by town, category or map instead of scrolling ads.
3
Get shared
Members feature each other, so one audience becomes many.
4
Get recommended
Cafes point to makers, retreats point to producers, everyone sends trade on.
5
Get stronger
Money circulates locally, quiet seasons soften, and the next business joins.

Add your business to the count

Every listing makes the picture of independent Cornwall a little more complete, and gives another local business a route to people who want to support them.

Add your business Browse the directory Support local

About these figures

Enterprise counts, size bands and local unit numbers are drawn from the latest 2025 official UK business population statistics for Cornwall. Self employment figures come from the latest labour market estimates. Official statistics do not classify firms by independent ownership, so the 25,000 headline describes micro and small enterprises rather than a verified count of independents: some are branches or subsidiaries. The sector split and the collective impact projections on this page are our own working estimates, shown to illustrate scale rather than to report measured outcomes.