2007
Our original company, Anicca Solutions, was founded in February 2007, by Ann Stanley and Alex Fowler.
Anicca evolved out of our previous businesses “New Homes Direct” and “Overseas Homes Direct”, where we sold new and off plan property directly from the developers (helped by Ann’s sister Dawn Clode, who was brilliant at selling property).
Although these businesses allowed us to develop our web development and search marketing skills, Alex and I did not really like the cut-throat aspect of property sales. as we were both techies and marketers at heart!
By the start of 2007, interest rates were increasing and the writing was on the wall that investors were pulling out of the previously booming property market. It was time to get out and focus on digital marketing and share our knowledge gained from working in such a competitive sector.
In the first half of 2007, our fledgling agency was still focused on property marketing, providing Google Ads and search marketing for the same property developers we had been working with before. However, within 6 months, the financial crash hit and it looked like we would not survive our first year! So, by the autumn, we were going to quit and get day jobs!
Fortunately, once the news was out, we suddenly got a inundated with requests to help other businesses (and agencies) with their PPC and SEO. Plus, we had some small contracts for Alex to build new websites, (using our own custom-built CMS).
We went into 2008, knowing that the skills we had developed were in demand and that practical experience of running our own business was a real USP compared to the few other search agencies that were starting to appear.
2008 - 2010
Between 2008 and 2010, Ann Stanley was bringing in a lot more work, due to her growing reputation for providing helpful advice and extensive technical knowledge, which she shared at every opportunity (via training and speaking slots at industry conferences). As demand and clients increased , we started recruiting some more experienced staff.
We opened our first office in 2009, next to the Holiday Inn, in Leicester, which we soon filled with our first 6 staff. In May 2010, we moved to bigger (but very old) offices in Castle View, Leicester – which was a listed building with its own dungeon! This allow us to expand the team to around 10. We also started “growing-our-own” team of talent by taking on recent grads from the local Leicestershire Universities.
In our first 3 years, we grew pretty quickly and many of the staff that joined us during that period helped us establish a lasting reputation for doing high quality work and getting great results with SEO and PPC.
One of our first and key employees back in 2009, was Gurpreet Bassi, who stayed with Anicca for over 12 years, and only leaving during Covid, when the change in circumstances meant that she wanted to try something new (by going inhouse).
Under Gurpreet’s watch, she developed the experience and capabilities of the PPC team. This has had a lasting impression as she managed 3 of our current senior mangement team, including Darren Wynn (Managing Director), Ed Truman (Head of Analyitcs and Data) and Holly Kelly, who is our new Head of Paid Media.
In 2010, we were one of the first companies in the country to achieve the Google AdWords Certified Partner accreditation and we had contracts with over 20 regular clients from the Midlands and across the country.
2011 - 2015
We continued to grow during rapidly between 2011 and 2012. We had 30 clients and 15 staff and we needed to move again in May 2012, to The Crescent on King Street, Leicester. However, we grew too quickly and at this time we were still learning how to manage the finances of the business. So in 2013, we regrettably had to close the original trading company (via a voluntary liquidation) and transfer our business across to Anicca Digital.
In 2014, Caroline Spence joined as our new Head of PR and Content Marketing (later becoming a director), allowing us to offer these new services. Her previous experience working with big agencies meant that we started working with bigger clients who needed a broad range of services, rather than just PPC or SEO. This gave us the foundations to start growing again.
In 2015, we made a lot of changes that really allowed us to accelerate our growth:
- We separated the web development part of our agency into a new company (Web Juice), allowing Anicca to focus on digital marketing
- Darren Wynn became operations director, working with Ann to lead the business
- Anicca founded Leicester Digital Meet-Up and Leicester Digital Live (previously named the E-Commercial Conference)
- We recruited Sam Hearn to join the team and create a new social media offering. We began to offer clients a full social media service for the first time
- Ann Stanley was listed within the top 200 influential people in Leicestershire (Leicester Mercury)
- Anicca was shortlisted for an award at The Drum awards for Best Retail/E-Commerce Campaign
- Anicca was shortlisted for an award at The UK Search Awards for Best PR and PPC campaign
- We expanded into a bigger office (within the same building) and invested heavily in marketing
2016
- Ann Stanley was awarded the accolade of Business Woman of the Year at the Leicestershire Women In Business Awards
- Anicca were finalists in three UK Search Awards and two Google Premier Partner awards
- Anicca was handpicked by Google for its Elevator programme
- Anicca were shortlisted at the Online Retail Awards 2016 for one of our PR and PPC campaigns
- Anicca was awarded Google Premier Partner status, across the fields of search, mobile, display and shopping ads
- Ann Stanley was invited to speak at SMX Advanced in Seattle after six years of speaking at SMX London
- Angie Longman joined us as head of client serivces, and went on to become Operations director, joining Caroline Spence, Darren Wynn and Ann Stanley on the board
2017
- Between 2017 and 2017, we had doubled our revenue and had started working with a lot of larger clients
- We celebrated our 10th birthday, with a summer party for all the staff and their families
- We purchased our own office, which gave us plenty room to grow
- We were finalists in three categories in the UK Search Awards
- We were finalists in three CIM awards including Marketer of the Year
- Ann Stanley graduated on the Goldman Sachs 10,000 small businesses programme
2018
- We won the Leicestershire Business Awards for Excellence in Customer Service (East Midlands Chamber of Commerce)
- Our A10 Framework was published – a comprehensive marketing guide designed to help businesses with their multi-channel campaigns, written by Ann Stanley
- Finalists in the UK Agency Awards for Best Integrated Campaign
- Finalists in The Drum Social Buzz Awards for Best Use of Instagram
- Finalists in The Drum B2B Awards
- We moved into our brand new, refurbished office building, in the heart of Leicester next to the River Soar
2019
- We won three awards at the prestigious Drum Search Awards – Best Use Of Data or Insights, Best B2B Campaign and the Grand Prix Award
- We were nominated for four awards in the UK Biddable Media Awards
- However, the impact of Brexit was not good in the summer of 2019, and with growing competition, it was not our most successful year
2020
We started 2020 full of optimism, Ann had managed to have a month’s holiday in New Zealand and all our hard work at the end of the previous year started to pay off, with an increase in new clients in January and February.
We decided to employ a specialist agency coach Janusz Stabik, to help us develop and implement or growth plans.
We just got started when COVID and the first lock down hit!
Unfortunately, we lost about 50% of our business within 2 months and had to furlough many staff.
Caroline Spence was able to start lecturing full time at DMU and a couple other staff used this as an opportunity to do other things.
Most of 2020, was spent coping with the financial shock and then remodeling and working on the business to recover.
In October 2020, we started to see some green shoots, we employed Angela Padfield as our head of new business, to help get us back on track. We also re-engaged Janusz, at the end of the year, to start again!
2021
We started 2021, with some sad news, the great redundancy had kicked in, and we lost a few key and senior members of the team, looking for new opportunities or doing something very different.
We used this as an opportunity to restructure the team and bring in some new talent. We have since recruited a number of senior staff, including:
- Angie Longman, Associate director for client delivery, (who left Anicca in 2019, to live in Yorkshire adn can now return by working remotely)
- Thom Shardlow, head of strategy
- Amy Howard-Paine, head of content & PR
- Katie Downing-Howitt, head of marketing
In addition, we have employed another 9 new members of staff across a range of roles and departments. We have also been able to recruit staff from all over the country, due to our flexi-working conditions.
Our hard work is paying off and we have now seen over 50% growth in revenues since March and we achieved 33% increase on our best every month pre-COVID.
- We still have ambitious growth plans and with the launch of our new webiste and new digital branding service (courtesy of Thom; we are about to enter our 15 year, with a new Mission!
