We know we keep talking about it, but the level of growth we have experienced here at The Point.1888 in the past year has been exponential. Following the past month’s press releases revealing the expansion of both our commercial team and our marketing creative team, we thought it would be good to write a post explaining how this development and expansion could be possible for The Point.1888 and Story.1888, and what this means to us at The Point.1888.
Our founder and managing director, Will Stewart explains below the growth process we have experienced in the past year, and introduces all of our new tribe members we have gained along the way…
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“We’ve been truly grafting here at the fungalow during the last 9 months.
By November 2020, we knew we had attracted a huge number of new brands into our business all of which needed our special attention from our already stretched brand management team. We set an ambitious target to double the team by the end of year 6 of trading (August 2021) and I’m happy to say we achieved it, growing our team from 14 to 28 legends. ‘Operation level up’ as it was called, was split into three phases to make the scale of the project a little more easy to digest for our leadership team. We knew we needed to beef up all parts of our growing business to maintain the standards we set, but we were doing it against a backdrop of 2nd lockdown and without the foresight of the real test of lockdown three.
We spend a huge amount of time building our culture at The Point HQ, and therefore attracting new humans who think like us, share our morals, values and ethics has been fairly easy. Identifying the 10/10 candidates that perfectly fit what we are looking for, and then creating the roles that both deliver what we need and what each candidate needs, is a much harder task.
But phase one was delivered by early January (just about the time the Kent variant was taking over our shores).
5 new legends joined. Amy and Sadie to support Carrie in our PD department, Kate in legal to support Lynne, Ellen joined our marketing team and Katie to product commercial focus on the exciting publishing category. They were all outstanding additions to our team and I’m glad to say have all worked out brilliantly (even though Amy selfishly went on Mat leave 3 months after joining… (joke, we love Mat leave at the point :))
We had realised over the Christmas period that our leadership team also needed beefing up and we wanted to recognise the outstanding efforts of three super legends within our team.
- Sarah was promoted to Director of Marketing, a role she had built from nothing to now encompass an entirely new second company; Story.1888.
- Janine was promoted to head of Product & Brand taking a leadership role for both a large portfolio of brands and our entire (massively growing) PD department.
- Hannah was promoted to Head of Retail & Sport – recognising the incredible sports business she has built over the last two years, she is now responsible for four hero brands across four hero sports; Team GB, British & Irish Lions, Williams F1 Racing and St Andrews Links.
With the new leadership team in place we were ready to tackle phase 2 of ‘Operation level up’.
Phase 2 was in place by the end of lockdown 3 in May. Those early months of 2021 were brutal. Lockdowns are not good for cashflow but our new business Story.1888 was thriving and bringing new revenue streams and new partnerships into the business.
As a result, three new legends joined our Marketing division;
- Andrea joined to lead and build Story.1888 to fulfil it’s exciting potential.
- Chris took over responsibility for our noisy PR machine, virtual conferences strategy, and everything else that falls under core marketing at The Point.1888
- Sophie joined to support them all and ensure they both had a life raft in the deep end
Story.1888 continues to flourish and the pivot from being purely licensing to both licensing and marketing will probably go down as one of the best Covid decisions here at The Point.
Phase 3 has now finally been announced and it’s probably the single most exciting announcement we’ve made.
Five shiny new humans have joined across four of our core divisions to ensure we maintain our outstanding reputation as the next generation of licensing. This is a people industry and we have now collected the best human team in history.
Rosanna joined to drive our retail and FMCG businesses, Sophie F joined our growing PD team with Summer, our work experience as support, Max and Naomi joined our brand and commercial teams and Mia joined our finance department.
It’s been a rollercoaster. Hiring is hard. Doubling the team during the hardest year in our history has taken super human efforts from the entire tribe. But now we are ready for the year ahead. A short break in August will be followed by an unbelievable year 7 and our biggest BLE yet.
And if you think we’re slowing down we’re not.
Phase 4 of ‘Operation level up’ is already underway and we’ve identified 13 new roles to fill by the end of 2021.
This business and the incredible humans within it never ceases to amaze me. I am truly honoured to work at The Point.1888.”
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With so many new members of the team joining, we only thought it right to ask the newer members of the team how the transition into The Point.1888 has been. This past year and a half has been a bizarre time to start a new job, with some members of the team starting virtually back at the beginning of this growth phase. The team however has excelled and rallied together to form relationships that go far beyond the workplace, but also make us feel like a family.
We caught up with some of our newest members of the team, to see how they felt about their move to The Point.1888. Here’s what they had to say…
“Moving to The Point has been a mixture of excitement, panic and inspiration! Starting a new role is always going to be daunting but with the support of my amazing team I feel like I have really been given the opportunity to fully immerse myself in our brands, the wonderful world of licensing and bounce around crazy ideas. My favourite thing so far about working at The Point is that no day is the same – one minute I can be in a virtual meeting talking about confectionery and the next visiting a brand owner to discuss apparel. But none of this would be possible without the amazing team at The Point, I’m so grateful to be surrounded by such genuinely lovely, creative and driven people. There is a real sense of family at The Point and it was obvious from day one how much the team cares about one another and the business, making it a really fun and inspiring place to work!!”
– Rosanna Cousins, Retail Manager
“The move to my first ‘big boy’ role straight from University was always going to be a daunting one, but I couldn’t have asked to join a more driven, supportive, (and above all) friendly team. I’ve been here just over 6 weeks now, but it feels as though I’ve been here years! The thing I’m enjoying most is the pace things are happening at, I’m being trusted to complete work and take on additional responsibility which is something I really value and take pride in. The fast-paced growth of the business I think just shows the dedication of the team, and illustrates just how important the success of the business is for everyone. We work with a number of wonderful companies, and I think the fact so many are engaging with our brands speaks volumes about the resilience and hard-working nature of the team.”
– Max Pilcher, Commercial Executive
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Overall, I think it’s fair to say that the level of growth that The Point.1888 has experienced over the past year and a half would not have been possible without the hard work from each and every member of our tribe. Every member of the team passionatley wants this business to be as successful as it could possibly be, and here at The Point.1888, we could not be more excited for our future growth!
Bring it on!
Head over to our LinkedIn to hear more from our business.