Situated on the picturesque Howard Street in the regenerated fishing town of North Shields, you will find brand and web agency, Cargo Creative.
Having been in operation for over a decade, Cargo Creative not only survived the pandemic but entered 2021 in its strongest financial position to date. We caught up with owner, Paul Hart, to chat about these unprecedented times, how it smashed its annual sales target, and what the future holds for the agency.
In the year that most businesses felt the pinch (to put it lightly) Cargo Creative surpassed its sales targets, how?
Don’t get me wrong, we also definitely felt the pinch but with the help of the furlough scheme and more of our clients recognising the need for a new digital presence and/or marketing solutions, we managed to not have staff off for too long and carved out some really interesting projects. For example, Ward Hadaway is one of our longest standing clients and it wanted to create an online Covid support hub offering free legal advice. Given the urgency of the requirement, the project had a tight turnaround time (a couple of weeks to get the first iteration up and running) and needed to be robust enough in its design and build to attract people to it. The client was over the moon with it and we’ve gone on to do even more work with them notably within digital marketing.We completely smashed our sales target. Not even taking the pandemic
into account, this year marked the first that we hit £500k which is a huge
milestone for myself and the team. It was definitely unexpected. Like most
creative businesses at the beginning of the pandemic, we were afraid of what
could have happened but I think because we offer such a breadth of services
and have an experienced and personable team we were able to not only
survive but thrive.
Speaking of the team, you’ve recently recruited more staff, how did that come about?
We’ve never wanted to specialise in a certain sector. The whole team comes from a range of backgrounds and industries so we wanted to utilise all of their experience rather than go after one. That has helped massively during the pandemic as we weren’t faced with multiple clients needing to cut back on activity.
We have also seen a surge in new work across a range of businesses both in and outside of the region as well as working with several health and lifestyle businesses in the US which are new areas for us to sink our teeth into.
To answer the needs of our clients we have grown our team by taking on three new employees to offer a full range of services from brand creation, digital design and development and online marketing and SEO to ensure that they are fully supported on an ongoing basis.
What are you currently working on?
Earlier in the year we delivered a new website for Insight Healthcare which has remained a highlight, mainly down to the fact that it supports those that are feeling low or vulnerable. It is an NHS referral service, and it has been humbling to help in an area where so many of us need support at this time.
Following that relationship, we’ve also just launched a refresh of Mental Health Concern which is the parent charity of Insight. This was aligned with Insight from a visual standpoint however, the two offer different services to separate audiences.
The multiple lockdowns we have endured as well as just the general uneasy feeling that surrounds a pandemic takes its toll and our mental health has taken a beating. I don’t know anyone that hasn’t been affected in some way, shape or form so to be able to support people’s wellbeing is a great feeling.
Other than that, and among others, we have completed a full rebrand for Filtronic – a global leader in Radio Frequency (RF), Microwave and MMwave technology with offices in Sedgefield and the USA. To update a multinational brand that has been around for over 40 years was really interesting.
We also have several projects that are close to completion. I can’t say too much about those as yet other than that they remain cross sector, so have a good deal of variety to them – watch this space.
What does the future look like for Cargo Creative?
Our aim for the next three years is to achieve an annual turnover of £1m but to keep our team a close knit one. It’s never been an ambition to employ 100 plus people, we love the family feel that comes with a smaller team and our clients also appreciate having that one point of contact who is extremely talented and capable.
