Tyneside tech firm SoPost is set to explore further expansion overseas following rapid growth.
The growing Newcastle firm helps brands run the most powerful product sampling campaigns in the world, with a focus on relevance, data and analytics. Working with major companies such as L’Oreal, Estee Lauder and Coty, SoPost sends one sample every couple of seconds and has seen huge growth since it was launched in 2012 by Jonny Grubin.
In the last two years alone the firm’s workforce has almost trebled, from 32 to 80, while new offices have also opened, giving the firm a presence in London, New York, Paris, Berlin and, most recently, Sydney, alongside its head office at The Core in Newcastle. Turnover has also rocketed, from a first year figure of just £578 to 2021 turnover of £14.7m.
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The company, which was picked to be on Tech Nation’s Upscale programme while also featuring on a number of lists highlighting fast growing UK firms, is now preparing for more growth after opening its office in Sydney.
Mr Grubin, CEO and founder, said: “We started testing the Australian market from the UK and had a pretty good response from brands, giving us confidence that there’s a major opportunity for online product sampling there. Particularly given the timezone differences, we knew that the only way to really succeed in Australia was to build a team locally, and that looks like it was the right move.
“Our first hire, Georgia Ball, has only been in her role since July 1, but we’ve already completed one roadshow and couldn’t have asked for a better or more enthusiastic response from brands. We don’t have a target number of hires but the goal is to make sure our team has all the talent and knowledge in market to be able to grow quickly, operate independently, and most importantly deliver strong results for our customers.
“In the last year we have opened offices in France and Germany and we’re currently mapping our next base. It will likely be in the Americas or Asia.”
He revealed the firm has evolved from a rather different plan.
He said: “Today, we’re the leader in online product sampling, but I founded SoPost with a very different vision. The original focus was to revolutionise the postal address by creating a dynamic address that was linked to our social IDs. The idea was that your address should be where you wanted stuff to be sent to, rather than your home, and instead of needing to know someone’s postcode you should just be able to use their phone number or email address as a proxy for their physical location.
"SoPost was going to be a dynamic addressing layer that would sit between a checkout and delivery truck. When I launched with that idea, I never could have predicted the success we’ve gone on to have in the decade since, nor did I really think we’d ever get to this kind of scale - aspiring to it is one thing, but actually making it happen is quite something else.”
Rooting SoPost in the North East, he says, is vital, and has delivered opportunities as well as challenges.
He added: “Being based here has been absolutely fundamental to our success and I couldn’t imagine having our headquarters anywhere else.
“Newcastle is a unique city with such a strong talent pool, and our set up gives us the best of both worlds - an incredibly strong tech and design hub in Newcastle, and commercial offices in the places where our customers are. It really comes down to people, and we can offer something special from our home in Newcastle, which we wouldn’t be able to do if we were headquartered somewhere else.”
“Our team is from all over the world, and in Newcastle we have people from places like Spain and Colombia, as well as many who have relocated from London and other parts of the UK. Newcastle’s quickly building its reputation as one of the best cities to maintain a healthy work/life balance, and while attracting good talent is always hard, we seem to be doing a good job of it. Brexit has made attracting European talent harder, but that’s been somewhat counterbalanced by some of the changes to working habits brought on by the pandemic.”
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