Defining Moment

Some people told us not to set up in business, that we were ‘stupid for taking the risk’ and that there was ‘no market for what we do in the North East’. Those comments acted as a real turning point; you either give in, or decide that you’re going to… read more

Defining Moment

In terms of where we started, my co-director Nina and I were working in the North East but felt as though our skills weren’t been utilised as effectively as they could be. I had worked internationally as an Industrial Designer and realised that it just… read more

Defining Moment

I was selected for an intensive business training course, which really helped me to assess where I wanted to be. The course helped me to gain the confidence I needed to believe that setting up my own business could help me to achieve my goals. Nina, my… read more

Lifestyle Story

Running a business has a huge impact on your lifestyle. It’s very difficult to switch off from the business and if something needs doing you just have to ‘muck in’ and get it done. Someone once said that it’s impossible to calculate how many hours… read more

Mistake To Avoid

In the early days we built up and utilised a lot of our networks which meant that we got many referrals and were very busy. However, many of the projects were small and although they make great case studies, in order to grow we needed larger scale… read more

Pearl Of Wisdom

Make the business work for you and what you want from life. However you do need to be realistic about the effort it will take to get what you want. A business will not be a success story if you go on holiday one week out of four, especially in the early… read more

Challenge

What we do is help organisations to deliver better services, which sometimes requires them to make changes to the way they currently do business. Gaining the trust of our clients is fundamental to the success of what we do, and gaining that trust takes… read more

Success

We don’t feel as though we’ve had one big success, rather we’ve had lots of smaller successes along the way; each one building our confidence and our credibility. The highlights for us include the Design Council and OneNorthEast Dott 07 project, which… read more

Aspiration

Our aspirations were to become recognised around the North East as the first port-of-call for companies looking to develop and grow by innovating their service offerings. In the early days, we didn’t anticipate where the business might take us; we just… read more

Support Story

In terms of support, we looked to NESTA (National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts) and DigitalCity Business in Middlesbrough. We also had support from Northumbria University’s Enterprise Campus and a number of mentors, without whom we… read more