Bridger Howes is a media consultancy company with just two employees. SME caught up with them to find out more about the business…
What have been your biggest challenges? How did you overcome them?
Beyond the hurdles that any start-up company has to overcome, capacity has been a buzzword at many meetings. Because of the nature of our business, our margins are healthy yet there is only so much work Mark and I can produce, while recruiting to match our skills will be challenging and sub-contracting could be detrimental to quality and margin. Selecting work carefully and having the courage to turn down projects has served us well. We’d rather have time to provide world-class customer service, network and educate ourselves than wear hours of service as a badge of honour.
What have been your greatest successes?
We staged three conferences in 2015 for the Lifting Equipment Engineers Association—in Singapore, Liverpool and Dubai. All were successful and presented our client as a worldwide authority in their sector. Our rapid growth has also been hugely rewarding, which we largely attribute to the belief that all audiences will judge content by its quality and react positively to those who generate it.
What are your top tips for SMEs?
Many will offer advice and much of it comes from people who know what they’re talking about, but every business and its markets are different and gut instinct is hugely important. In our case, it’s true that there are many PR companies but there weren’t any doing what we do, thus, there was a gap in the market. Don’t be afraid of reinventing the wheel if there’s a market looking to move using less efficient methods.
