Category Archives: North of England

News, North of England

Yorkshire digital agency with humble beginnings marks three years in business with new client wins

Huddersfield-based Beanie Media, a web design and development, video and social media agency is celebrating its third birthday with two new client wins.

Marking the anniversary, the team are celebrating winning website maintenance contracts for two large e-commerce brands, which will see projected growth over the next twelve months rise by 680 percent from its £57k start in year one.

Melissa Roberts, Beanie Media’s managing director explained: “Selling products and services online is a growing market, accelerated by the recent pandemic.

“We work closely with online retailers to ensure their products are seen and importantly, sold. We understand the importance of providing a positive first impression when customers visit a client’s website, and we provide the all-important tools to ensure this.

“Winning two clients whilst celebrating our third birthday is the icing on the cake, and we can’t wait to grow the Beanie Media team and client base further.”

Melissa and Dan Atkinson started the business from Starbucks with £30 in the bank in 2018, both leaving their jobs to take the plunge and launch Beanie Media. They were 18 and 19 at the time and spent the first six months building a reputation, networking and saving enough money to rent their own office space. Beanie Media has been built from the ground up, with the entrepreneurial co-founders using money from sales to reinvest into the business as it grows.

Beanie Media specialises in supporting e-commerce businesses and believe that a web agency should consist of more than just creating a website, helping their clients implement the right marketing strategy to increase customers and profits.

The digital agency works on marketing projects with clients in the UK, recently completing a design and web development project for the West Yorkshire Consortium of Colleges and working with Hello Huddersfield – a project funded by Huddersfield BID.

Beanie Media also handles the paid advertising for an online furniture company, driving a 32x return on their advertising spend and decreasing the cost per lead for a Yorkshire-based, electric gate company by over 60 percent, following a takeover from another agency.

Looking to the future, Melissa has ambitious plans to grow Beanie Media and is focused on expanding its technical capability for website development and design projects. This will support the company in servicing its growing portfolio of e-commerce clients and attracting new customers.

She’s also joined the board for the Mid Yorkshire Chamber of Commerce, after being a patron for the last year, and a member since Beanie Media launched three years ago.

Beanie Media has recently added two new employees to the team, welcoming Anna Coleman as a social media executive and Harry Howells joining the business as a paid media specialist. The company is currently recruiting for an e-commerce assistant and junior web developer to join their expanding team.

News, North of England

Female Entrepreneur Beats the Pandemic Odds by Growing Business By 30%

As many businesses have suffered greatly from the fall out of Covid-19, the world’s first geospatial marketer and Yorkshire resident, Elaine Ball has announced the successful growth of her business, Elaine Ball Ltd – a dedicated business & marketing consultancy for the global Geospatial industry, delivering business, sales, and marketing consulting services through workshops, consultancy, training, and execution.

Expecting to be impacted negatively by the pandemic, Elaine has in fact seen revenue grow by 30% and staff increase by 25% over the past 12 months.

In 2013, Elaine invested £60,000 of her own savings to launch Elaine Ball Ltd, hiring seasoned professionals from the field to bolster team experience and skill – an investment that has paid off eight years later.

The company has experienced a period of rapid expansion, particularly with the launch of its Get Kids into Survey recruitment campaign, designed to introduce and educate the younger generation to the relatively unknown world of surveying and encourage them to consider it as a possible career path. 

Elaine Ball Ltd has also now formally launched the all-new global Geospatial Marketing Academy (GMA). This is an online programme for survey companies and equipment manufacturers/resellers, helping them to get clear on their transformations and bring a client-driven marketing approach in house. 

Elaine comments:

“It’s fantastic that the business has gone from strength to strength and we’re turning over more revenue than we ever have before. I truly believe this is down to the passion behind and intent of the team, focused on raising the standards of sales and marketing within the Geospatial industry.”

“The pandemic hasn’t deterred our mission at all – in fact, it may have helped. As strange as that may sound, the industry as a whole is very behind in terms of techniques, for instance many of them haven’t been using digital marketing techniques. Lockdown forced many geospatial companies online for the first time, which was necessary and long overdue!”

News, North of England

Third deal in a year for Ascensor Digital Agency as they acquire Blue Mantis assets.

Leeds-based digital marketing agency Ascensor has announced their third M&A deal in a year with the acquisition of Blue Mantis assets. The deal, for an undisclosed sum, secures Blue Mantis’ clients, and includes the recruitment of six Blue Mantis employees.

Commenting on the acquisition, Ascensor MD Andrew Firth says:

“This is a strategic opportunity to accelerate the growth of Ascensor, safeguard jobs and provide clients with continuity of service.”

A perfect fit

“The purchase is a perfect fit for Ascensor” says Andrew.  “Blue Mantis have been established for 11 years, with a leading position as a developer of bespoke web software for automotive, retail and professional services clients. This deal complements our existing digital transformation activities for businesses in these sectors, and adds a raft of like-minded talent to our team.”

As part of the deal, Ascensor has recruited the three directors of Blue Mantis. Martyn Lee becomes Head of Client Services, David Eggington joins as a Senior UX designer, and Keith Hill takes up a senior role in the application development team. The recruitment count also includes Chris Nightingale (Senior Account Manager), Megan Lancaster (Service Delivery Manager) and Egle Kreivyte (Back-end Developer).

Andrew Firth adds: “Our purchase brings Blue Mantis clients including JCT600 Vehicle Leasing Solutions and Colin Appleyard from the automotive sector; financial services marketing firm, The Dubs, and consulting firm BWL Consulting. The recruitment ensures that all clients will benefit from the continuity of service and support, but now with the support of a larger team and our processes.”

Third acquisition in a year

Andrew Firth comments: “I’m thrilled to announce our third acquisition in a year, which follows our 2020 asset and client purchase from Bradford-based web design and app development business Webposse, together with its associated web hosting firm ClaretMedia LLP.  This latest acquisition demonstrates our continued appetite for growth and acquiring businesses which provide a strong strategic fit with our plans, and helps us to continue to grow our highly talented team.”

Commenting on the deal, Martyn Lee says: ‘This is a very exciting time for my colleagues and I. Ascensor are well established and we’ve admired their work from afar. Becoming part of their journey and bringing our expertise and long-established clients with us creates the perfect win-win situation”.

Established in 2007, Ascensor has grown rapidly in recent years, achieving turnover growth of more than 50% in 2020 and 2019. Their target for 2021 is £3.0M. The acquisition of Blue Mantis brings the total headcount at Ascensor to 36 employees.

Ascensor recently moved to state-of-the-art offices in Leeds, including dedicated events space for educational seminars, to business and community partners. They recently won Best Large Digital Agency of the Year in the Northern Digital Awards and achieved ISO27001 information security accreditation.

 

 

Automotive, News, North of England

UK needs to swiftly amplify accessibility of chargepoints

Written by Mr. Kunal Sawhney, CEO, Kalkine Media

Building an efficient electric vehicle (EV) landscape is not only about making the vehicles affordable to purchase and own, but it also entails several other factors, including the post-sale services, charging infrastructure and availability of chargepoints in rural and semi-urbanised localities.

The government of the United Kingdom, alongside the major EV manufacturers and ancillary suppliers, are collectively working to increase the perceived value of the vehicles that can encourage more consumers to buy eco-friendly vehicles in the present decade, thereby supporting the nation’s plan to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars by 2030.

The elimination of all the fossil fuel powered passenger vehicles by 2035 from the roads will be pivotal in bolstering the broader objective of attaining a net zero status by 2050.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has laid out several measures to make sure that there is an ample number of EV chargepoints in the country by the time the authorities put a ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars in 2030.

According to the CMA, the availability of EV chargepoints has been increasing relatively well at locations including private parking garages, driveways, shopping centres and workplaces, but several parts are still facing problems that can hinder the government’s plans of embargoing the sale of new petrol and diesel cars.

A potential delay in the near-term objectives, including the ban on petrol and diesel cars, can certainly extend the timeline of the larger objective of becoming net zero nation by 2050. At the moment, the rural jurisdictions only account for a handful of EV chargepoints, mostly due to lower investment, while the roll-out of on-street charge stations by the local authorities is witnessing very slow growth in the installation.

As far as the driver’s ease is concerned, a large section of car owners, including the commercial drivers, will rely on the on-street chargepoints as nobody has sufficient time to detour to a shopping centre every time when the vehicle needs a backup, while workplaces can only establish a few chargepoints due to space constraints.

As of now, the total public chargepoints in Yorkshire and the Humber per head are quarter as compared to those available in London. Recharging your vehicle certainly requires a high amount of time as compared to refilling with petrol or diesel, as a result of which, it can be burdensome for drivers when there is an emergency.

The level of difficulty and frustration in accessing a chargepoint can abate the apparent enthusiasm amidst the car buyers, it could even lead to an immense disappointment and will eventually diminish the number of people who are looking forward to switching to an EV.

The transformation at such a large scale unequivocally requires added advantages, and, at the same time, there must be ease of switching to EVs from the conventional vehicles and age-old habit of quick refilling. Furthermore, the vast difference in the prices and tariffs set by privately held chargepoints can induce concerns about the reliability of charge stations.

As the EV ecosystem passes the nascent stage, people often find it difficult to compare prices for recharging the vehicles. In order to facilitate an experience like a refuelling station, the authorities are required to ensure that the recharging stations must have quick service chargepoints and transparent pricing.

All the operations chargepoints should be easy-to-locate, the working condition should be updated regularly in EVs that have a lower buffer of energy as compared to petrol or diesel vehicles. Along with this, the charging experience should be simple and quick to pay, with no obligatory requirement of signing up or registration and an abundance of payment options.

Uniformity of chargepoints should also be maintained as with the limited number of stations, the country is not in a position to bifurcate the recharging places for different types of vehicles. As per the estimates of the competition regular, the present count of chargepoints in the UK stands at 25,000, while more than 10 times this number will be required if the government wants to eliminate the petrol and diesel vehicles within the predefined time period.

News, North of England

Yorkshire business marks incredible growth as it expands its C-Suite

Yorkshire-based business & mindset coaching agency, Social Cactus, has announced the appointment of Chris Fawcett as Partner and CFO, taking the business to a team of nine.

Leeds-born Chris (31), Founder of Chris Fawcett Coaching, has also taken on the role of Head Coach. The Master Practitioner of NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), Time Line Therapy and Hypnosis will be working 1:1 with newer business owners, helping them with business and mindset coaching as they grow their own coaching and service-based businesses.

Amy Crumpton, Founder of Social Cactus, who is also a certified NLP practitioner and practitioner of Time Line Therapy said of the appointment: “I am so excited to share this amazing news. Chris is a super-talented coach and is the perfect person to help our clients to start their businesses off on the right foot – after building his own coaching business to 5-figure months in less than two years.”

Chris added: “The response so far has been incredible. The programme we have established for new business owners, Magnetic 1:1 Coaching is already at capacity and we have a waiting list for the next intake” Due to the popularity of our coaching programmes, we have recently appointed two new coaches to support the growth of the business and the ever-increasing demand for coaching.

The announcement comes shortly after the agency hit £500,000 in sales in the past year, supporting record numbers of clients, and continued with their work in the Cactus Foundation.

Amy and Chris are establishing the Foundation together to “provide ambitious entrepreneurs in underprivileged communities around the world with the resources, training and development they need to start their own businesses. By doing this, it will create a positive impact for the entrepreneurs themselves, their families, and their communities as a whole”.

The Cactus Foundation will be supporting causes close to their hearts too, which so far includes plans for the building of an animal shelter for the charity ‘Rescued Paws’ in Spain and improving education, and delivering small business coaching in South America.

Commercial Property, News, North of England

Landwood Group Wins Instruction From Property Regeneration Company Harworth Group

Landwood Group, North West-based experts in property, plant and machinery and business assets, has won an instruction from Harworth Group to manage its business space portfolio.

Based in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, Harworth Group is one of the largest land and property regeneration companies in the UK, owning and managing 16,000 acres on 100 sites across the Midlands and North of England.

The instruction sees Landwood Group’s Commercial Asset Management division manage Harworth Group sites, comprising a portfolio of 21 industrial assets across the country.

The group has taken over the mandate from real estate consultancy Lambert Smith Hampton.

Since winning the instruction, the asset management division has already undertaken work in property management and facilities management on a number of small lettings on the multi-let estates. The rent collection statistics have been consistently high with collection rates around the 95% mark for the last few quarters.

Anna Main, Director and Head of Commercial Asset Management at Landwood, said: “We are thrilled to have been instructed by a client as high profile as Harworth Group to carry out work across its estates.

“We have built a reputation for not just managing the assets in our portfolio but truly maximising the value of them. A real highlight of the instruction has already been seeing the change in the presentation of the sites and receiving positive feedback from occupiers on improvements made on site.

“We look very much forward to supporting and working alongside Harworth Group for the foreseeable future.”

The Harworth Group is the latest in a string of high-profile instructions Landwood Group’s commercial asset management has won over the past year, alongside experiencing rapid growth.

Headquartered in Manchester, Landwood Group has seen turnover increase 70% over the past year, with strong financial performance in all four of its service lines.

 

News, North of England

Locala commended for how it supports and develops colleagues as new recruitment drive launches

Locala Health and Wellbeing is among the top 20% of companies nationally when it comes to how they lead, support and develop colleagues after the social enterprise was awarded Investors in People ‘We invest in people’ Silver Award.

The news comes as West Yorkshire-based Locala launches a new recruitment campaign to show the range of opportunities available across both clinical and support roles.

Locala is a not-for-profit social enterprise that provides a variety of NHS community healthcare services. Those services care for, and support people, from before birth to end of life, ranging from health visitors to physiotherapy, and sexual health to district nursing, as well as dental care, school nurses, and foot care.

Dianne Frost, Director of Organisational Development and People, said: “This is a fantastic achievement for our Locala colleagues and shows that we have made significant improvements over the past three years in what has been an incredibly challenging time for colleagues and our communities due to the Covid-19 pandemic.”

Paul Devoy, CEO of Investors in People, said: “We’d like to congratulate Locala Health and Wellbeing.  Silver accreditation on ‘We invest in people’ is a remarkable effort for any organisation, and places Locala in fine company with a host of organisations that understand the value of people.”

This week also marks the start of a new recruitment campaign by Locala to help meet the growing demand for community healthcare. Recruitment is already under way for a number of roles ranging from Dental Nurse Team Leader, IT Service Analyst and Community Nurses to a number of Graduate Intern roles.

Though many of the roles available require clinical training, Locala also recruits for other roles in support services such as finance, human resources, colleague engagement, communications, administration and estates. Locala also supports colleagues to develop through apprenticeship routes.

The organisation has the flexibility to tailor its services to meet the needs of the communities it serves – and any financial surplus is re-invested straight back into supporting patient care. It is owned by its colleagues and community members and now has 1,800 members. Members are a driving force for positive change and play an active role in shaping the community healthcare services.

Dianne Frost, Director of Organisational Development and People at Locala, added: “Our vision as a social enterprise is that we believe in supporting people to have better lives by investing all of our resources into local communities. We’re hoping to recruit colleagues who will support our vision and ensure that the people and communities we serve can access the high-quality healthcare that they need.”

There are a number of benefits on offer to those working at Locala such as training and continuous personal development, salary packages in line with NHS Agenda for Change terms and conditions and generous annual leave which increases with length of service.

Dianne added: “Our colleagues are at the heart of Locala and we value and are proud of them and we make sure to celebrate individual, team and organisational success. If you want to be part of a team of varied colleagues, receive training and support and give back to the community – apply for a role at Locala.”

As the organisation grows and colleagues develop in to new roles, we continuously recruit to a variety of positions If you’re interested in finding out more about Locala and the roles available, please visit: https://www.locala.org.uk/about-us/working-with-locala.

News, North of England

Yorkshire CIC’s share of £18.7m grant helps to support 65 unemployed people into work

  • Funding from Social Enterprise Support Fund, distributed by UnLtd, helped Offploy place 65 people into work in midst of the pandemic.
  • Support also enabled the social enterprise to bring staff back from furlough
  • Offploy mentored 530 people with convictions during this time

A share of the £18.7m National Lottery Community Fund – of which UnLtd distributed £6.3m – has allowed Yorkshire social enterprise, Offploy, to triple its commitment to supporting those with unspent convictions, an often-neglected group of candidates, into sustainable work across the UK.

The funding enabled Offploy to remobilise operations, bring back furloughed staff, and put the company on a secure financial footing. As a result, the recruitment specialist placed 65 candidates between September 20 and May 21.

Further investment in its tech stack helped to improve efficiencies across the organisation, and has seen Offploy provide 2,400 hours of additional support to some of society’s most vulnerable people during Q1 of 2021 – an increase from just under 700 hours on the same period in 2020.

Jacob Hill, founder of Offploy said: “Almost 12 months to the date that Offploy was forced to furlough all but one of its employees, we’re humbled to be able to say we’ve not only been able to bring our own colleagues back full-time, but we’ve helped 65 people find work, too.

“None of this would have been possible without the support of UnLtd, who helped not only to ‘keep the lights on’ during a difficult time but provided us with the funding needed to rebuild and deliver our service to those who need it the most – in a time where it is needed more than ever. I am pleased to say that, on top of the return of our team, we have since hired a further six colleagues, all with lived experience, to meet the demand for our service.”

Offploy was one of 600 social enterprises to qualify for the funding, out of over 1500 applications to the joint fund – which was distributed by UnLtd and partner organisations – designed to support firms through the challenges of the pandemic.

Mark Norbury, CEO of UnLtd, added: “In September 2020, research showed that a quarter of social enterprises in the UK only had cash flow to weather the next three months or less – and demand for their crucial services was going through the roof. Despite this perfect storm, Offploy and many others managed to deliver incredible essential services to the communities most affected by the pandemic.

“With our partners, we delivered the Social Enterprise Support Fund to help social entrepreneurs stabilise the future of their ventures and enable them to continue to deliver their crucial community services. The results Offploy has achieved with this funding are remarkable, and hopefully a marker of what an inclusive recovery could look like for the UK”.

The Social Enterprise Support Fund was established in partnership by The National Lottery Community Fund and five social enterprise support agencies – Big Issue Invest, The Key Fund, Community Land & Finance CIC, the School for Social Entrepreneurs (SSE) and UnLtd – with support from CAF Venturesome, the Young Foundation and Ashoka.

Thanks to National Lottery players, £18.7 million of funding has been committed to the fund, providing grants to social enterprise organisations that are best placed to support local, vulnerable communities in response to the Covid-19 crisis.

With 66% of Offploy’s own workforce having experienced the criminal justice system first-hand, the social enterprise has been a part of the scheme since 2016.

Charity & CSR, North of England

Fox Agency cycles the length of the UK for Cycle to Work Day

B2B tech marketing specialist Fox Agency is cycling the length of the UK ahead of Cycle to Work Day, to celebrate its nationwide team and raise money for mental health charity, Mind.

With employees working remotely throughout the UK, as part of the agency’s hybrid working model, Cycle to Work Day on August 5 presents something of a challenge for the Fox Agency team. A rise in remote working has resulted in a decrease in local employees cycling to work, and for team members further afield in London for example, cycling to the agency’s Leeds HQ poses a tough task.

To celebrate the agency welcoming employees based up and down the country and even abroad, Fox Agency has vowed to cycle, not just to work, but to the equivalent distance of the entire length of the country. For this 600-mile mission the agency is hoping for sponsorship and the proceeds will be donated to mental health charity, Mind.

The agency has a huge focus on employee wellbeing and offers weekly online personal training sessions, yoga and meditation courses, art masterclasses and even virtual comedy gigs to support the mental and physical wellbeing of the team. Based on this focus, it seemed fitting that the proceeds from this challenge went towards a cause which supports the wellbeing of others.

On Fox Agency’s Cycle to Work Challenge, Director Al Fox said: “Along with our other wellbeing initiatives, we offer a Cycle to Work scheme. However, when the team spans the length and breadth of the country, there’s only so much use we can make of such a scheme. I’m really proud of the agency for taking on this challenge which is great for team moral and wellbeing, and will also raise money and awareness for a very worthy cause.”

News, North of England

First Bus And The Piece Hall Bring Staycation ‘Seaside’ To Halifax

First Bus is partnering with The Piece Hall to bring an annual family summer attraction to the famous Grade 1 listed leisure and tourism venue in Halifax, which they plan to become a regular date in the region’s event calendar.

For the launch in July, its giant courtyard will be transformed into a beachfront packed with traditional attractions to bring a staycation seaside holiday atmosphere to West Yorkshire.

Sandy Summer Daze in association with First Bus takes place from Friday 23 to Tuesday 27 July and features a beach area with 75 deckchairs for parents and children together with buckets & spades, beach huts, games and a ‘promenade’ featuring amusements including a peep-through display and giant deckchair for photo memories of a family day out ‘beside the seaside’.

A programme of entertainment will see live music by bands and artists preparing for the Brodstock Festival in nearby Hipperholme in August, which is also being supported by First Bus.

Surrounding the beach area will be pop-up food and drink stalls, ice-cream stands and a beach-themed event bar.

Martin Hirst, Commercial Director of First West Yorkshire, said: “We’re really excited about this partnership with The Piece Hall and our shared ambition to support the local economy and build on life returning to the streets of Halifax.

“This collaboration is about us working together to connect local people and communities to great events and experiences in the heart of the town.

“We know that Halifax can come back stronger and local people getting out, getting involved and getting to do the things they enjoy will be essential in helping achieve this over the summer and the months ahead.” Stephen Bullock, Chief Operating Officer of The Piece Hall Trust, added: “The support from First Bus really helps us offer family entertainment such as Sandy Summer Daze. It’s so important, after the past 18 months, that families can reconnect, meet their friends and enjoy themselves in a safe environment, which is exactly what The Piece Hall offers.”

The beach area will be open from 10:00-18:00 each day with free entry for one parent and two children. Tickets will be available from The Piece Hall website https://www.thepiecehall.co.uk/ from Monday 19 July which allows a family to book one of five 75-minute sessions throughout the day to relax and have fun in the sand.

First Bus is expecting its 501 and 503 services between Huddersfield and Halifax to be a popular option for people travelling in the Calder Valley as these stop close to The Piece Hall. The operator is launching new tickets for summer travel which include an adult single with unlimited journeys on weekends and a group ticket for up to 5 people to travel for £5 return.