Marcus Richards
We are a creative agency specialising in supporting brands with design, print and website design & development. We exist to support our clients to grow their business through building brand awareness and maintaining brand consistency.
Tell us about yourself?
After several years working in various client services roles, I joined the print industry in 2006 where I managed client services teams for over a decade.
During this time I was part of the digital transformation within print and most importantly experienced the advances in multi-channel marketing which perfectly blended my love of print with the cross-over to digital.
Since then I have developed experience and a passion for digital brand representation as well as maintaining a love for offline marketing. This has brought me to a role running an agency that combines the key services I am still passionate about – design, print & web.
If you could go back in time a year or two, what piece of advice would you give yourself?
Trust your gut. My experiences of the past 2 years have proved that a lot of times my instincts are right but I have too often let the opinions of others dictate the direction I have taken.
What problem does your business solve?
We help businesses grow their brand by working as an extension of their team; performing the role of marketing manager, graphic designer, print manager, website developer and packaging supplier all within one single relationship.
For SMEs this can provide a huge cost saving and for larger organisations we can work alongside each or all of these roles to increase capacity and support their teams to be their most effective.
What is the inspiration behind your business?
Our foundation is in print & design and the love of it. Combine this with a genuine passion to see the businesses we work with succeed then you’ll understand what Summit Creative are all about.
We understand that if a business isn’t growing then it’s dying and elevating brand awareness whilst reducing costs is what we are here to support, keeping our clients alive and thriving.
What is your magic sauce?
Our humility and honesty. We collaborate with our clients, admitting our weaknesses and sharing our strengths and we’re never afraid to take on a difficult challenge if they need us to help them achieve their goals.
What is the plan for the next 5 years? What do you want to achieve?
Growth through technical innovation. All key projects within the company are aimed at one thing – slicker processes and automation, and this is both in the products and services we are providing to our clients as well as the internal operations we are implementing within the team.
What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far?
A split in the business leadership. Our current business has been created by the splitting of a larger business in which the leadership team wanted to move in separate directions.
For some time we tried to accommodate the service offshoots under one umbrella company but finally a decision was made to split the businesses and set up separate entities.
There are still a lot of issues surrounding the split but they are now thankfully being managed well and a clear exit strategy is being executed.
How do people get involved/buy into your vision?
We believe that all businesses are unique, just like the people who run them, so we have always resisted the urge to ‘package’ our services and stifle the way we work with our clients. That is why the only way to engage with us is to get in touch.
We want to hear from businesses who have a genuine desire to invest in how they present themselves to the world and understand the importance of leveraging brand awareness to grow their business.
Email us on [email protected], call us on 01623 625222 or drop onto the website and get in touch via our online chat or book an appointment for a consultation, summitcreative.co.uk.
