The founders of Dublin-based Flexitimers.com Dervla Cunningham and Joy Redmond, would be the first to admit they could have launched at a better time. Conceived when the word recession still had a nostalgic quality and launched in the week after the recession was made official in Ireland in late September, start-up life certainly has its challenges.

Flexitimers was created to provide an alternative to recruitment agencies for the SME community. It also wanted to avoid the Elance.com and similar US models, which Redmond says results in the companies posting freelance jobs being bombarded with bids for the work, with the cheapest typically winning the business.

Cunningham had already set up and run two web companies - an e-business services company Zartis.com which was sold to US buyer Breakaway Solutions and Arekibo Communications, a web design consultancy. She often found it difficult to find the right people without paying recruitment agencies exorbitant sums, while Redmond has worked as a freelance market researcher for numerous blue-chip companies so had experienced the other side of the fence. "There was nobody covering it in Ireland," says Redmond. "There were agencies that would send out staff, but it would cost €800 a day."

At the time, the recruitment industry was still booming and companies were struggling to find the right people to fill available roles. Since then, of course, supply has far outstripped demand. But on the other hand, with flexibility at its core, repositioning the business as a recession-friendly alternative to taking on full-time staff was an obvious step. "There's a cap on headcount, but freelance staff is something more companies are looking for, while candidates are looking to supplement their incomes," says Redmond.

In addition to SME firms, the likes of Microsoft are among companies posting short-term positions on the platform, with Flexitimers' software matching candidates and companies. The offering has evolved too, with Redmond and Cunningham providing a more in-depth screening service. "We always wanted it to be a people to people business, not just an agency," says Redmond. "We've had a lot of hugely positive feedback and PR coverage, plus registrations of really high quality candidates or small companies offering flexible accounting, legal, IT, marketing and sales services."

By 2010, the screening service is likely to play a more significant role alongside the Web 2.0 technology and it's likely the pair will seek to raise some additional funds. They initially raised €100,000 from Enterprise Ireland, and utilised incubation and enterprise services offered by NovaUCD, the Innovation and Technology Transfer Centre in Dublin, the South East Enterprise Platform Programme (SEEPP), Dublin Business Innovation Centre (DBIC), Dublin City Enterprise Board (DBEC) and Wexford County Enterprise Board (WCEB), where Redmond operates from. They also put in €100,000 of their own money.

It's clearly been a tough first year and serious revenue is still more a target than a reality, but with upheaval comes opportunity and Flexitimers may well live up to its name and adapted quickly enough.

Fairtrade products have become ubiquitous over the last few years, but haven’t by any means reached as many areas of food retail as they could. Obviously coffee comes to mind, as do bananas, but what about all the other food products from developing countries that we take for granted?

Liberation is the first 100% fair trade business, making headlines this week when it launched the ‘Harry’s Nuts’ brand with award winning surrealist comedian Harry Hill. It's a ‘community interest company’ – a social enterprise set up to protect the interest of the community in question. It puts a cap on dividends and locks the assets into the business.

‘We exist to serve the interests of producers and nut farmers, sourcing nuts from five continents...fair trade is giving aid through trade – it’s more sustainable’ , explains managing director Ceri Willmott. Co-operatives of nut growers and exporters at different stages of development work with Liberation. ‘We’ve worked with nascent co-ops and in some cases like Malawi we’ve helped start the co-operative from scratch’, adds Willmott. The largest shareholder is the co-operative itself, which takes a 42% share, while the other 58% of Liberation is owned by ‘ethical investors’. For this reason, the investors attracted to community interest companies are first and foremost concerned with assisting the community in question. On top of that, says Willmott, ‘We invest 1% of all our products in a producer partnership programme...which goes into helping the producers improve their products.’

Liberation is in the same stable as leading fair-trade brand Cafe Direct, being a project of Twin and Equal Exchange. Launched in June 2007 after some time trading as the Ethical Nut Company, the products can be found in Sainsbury’s, Waitrose and Oxfam, amongst other stores, while 80% of the business is actually ‘own-label’ fair trade nuts for suppliers including the likes of Tesco.

An initial investment of £1.5m got the company off the ground, while a certain level of refinancing is being looked at to continue pushing the brand. But what it all comes down to really, suggests Willmott, is making a difference to the 22,000 farmers and their families. She was a City lawyer before completing a PHD in anthropology and forging a career in international development, and it seems this want for change is pushing the business – and the consumers – forward together. ‘We’re bringing producers from around the world to Kerala in India next month. So farmers from the middle of nowhere in South America will travel to meet with other farmers from the middle of nowhere in India!’ There’s not too many companies who can claim to host such an interesting annual meeting.