As a Giraffe member you are part of a professional business network focussed on supporting like-minded business colleagues in and around Carlisle. Our members are a mixture of business owners and employees. As our homepage suggests, the idea of this business networking group is to find the ripe opportunities, the high hanging fruit, to make our businesses grow sustainably.

Our members are also members of many (and none) of the other networking groups in Carlisle. We tend to encourage a single representative from each type of business. Currently we have members from a large local printer copier supplier, an IT support company, painter and decorator, mobile car valeting, carpet sales, an insurance company, digital marketing, a toddler swimming school and a civil engineer who is also a serial entrepreneur.

Each of these widely different characters brings their own unique story to the meetings. And those diverse business and life experiences, freely shared, give perspective to our discussions and showcases. We aim to keep the group fairly small but encourage members to invite visitors along with a view to joining, but also to bring fresh perspectives into the room.

Like many new variations on a theme, the Giraffe network was formed in 2016, when our founding members became a little dissatisfied with the way the existing business networks functioned. That's not a criticism of other groups.

We are well aware that each network suits different business outlooks and personalities. And we are often still members of those networking organisations as well. Curiously, several of our members are reluctant networkers, who didn't think business networking was for them, until they were tempted to come and give us a try.

However, there was an element that was missing for the initial members and Giraffe was their answer to creating a network that worked for them. From those early days the Giraffe group has grown into a small professional network that meets weekly. The group is based on openness and thrives on people being open to form trusting relationships with people from other sometimes similar businesses.

It's rare that you'll see business cards being passed around, unless there is a new face or a visitor in the room. Our meetings don't focus on relentlessly promoting our business but rather to form relationships with other businesses to build each other up. Selling our products or services happens every week, but getting salesy isn't how this group works.

Members are mostly small business people who find our networking events to be the equivalent of a breakfast happy hour. Look out for us on the usual social media channels, we are hard to miss.

If you think our flavour of networking is right for you, please do speak to one of our members. They will be happy to arrange for you to come along as a visitor: initially to test the water. If you like our approach after a couple of visits, then we would love to welcome you to the group.