Businessman with designs on a successful second year

A senior designer who accepted redundancy three years ago is celebrating after his start-up business completed its first full year of trading, increasing turnover from £50,000 to nearly £200,000 in the process.

Paul Grogan set up Think Design Manchester after freelancing for nearly two years, travelling across the country to work with clients such as Amazon, Balfour Beatty and global seismology business Guralp.

Now the team, based on Turks Road in Radcliffe, is four-strong and looking forward to the next year of working with clients across the North West, ranging from restaurants to construction and offering services such as website building and design to branding, photography and digital strategy.

As the company’s founder, Paul believes that by combining his years of design experience with an out-of-city location is the recipe to Think Design’s success in its first year.

“We set up the office in Radcliffe, away from the hustle and bustle of Manchester. This gives us an affordable base and allows us to keep our overheads in check and, as a result, our costs are slightly more affordable than our Manchester counterparts,” he explained.

“Also, having commuted to Manchester for 18 years, I wanted to stay local and use the time saved on commuting to work on the business and have more time with my kids.”

After the first year of trading increasing the company’s turnover from £50,000 to nearly four times that – despite the difficult economic environment – Paul is now looking forward to the next twelve months and what they could bring for the company.

“I’d love to get the team up to six people, increase the turnover again and maybe win some awards, but most importantly, we want to keep winning new work and keep our standards high, and customers happy,” he said.

“I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve achieved already. We have a proven track record of providing a substantial ROI for our clients and I’m especially proud of a new global business choosing to work with us because they wanted to work with the “best of the best”. It doesn’t get much better than that.”