Andrew
Firth is owner of Ascensor one of Yorkshire's leading digital agencies,
providing website development and marketing to businesses across the UK.
Ascensor,
based at Birstall, was formed in 2007 by Andrew Firth and Stuart
Holdsworth, a year after they formed a successful online retail business
that sells gifts and gadgets, distributed from their 5,000’ warehouse.
Having
developed all technologies both front and back-office the pair created
Ascensor to resell technologies and experience to businesses across
other sectors.
Ascensor
have a wealth of experience in developing online solutions in the
retail, property and financial sectors and also support many local
charities with heavily subsidised or pro-bono projects.
Andrew
is passionate about business and how the internet can deliver business
growth through new and evolving online technologies.
Andrew writes a monthly column in both the Dewsbury Press and the
Huddersfield Examiner to provide digital information to other business
owners.
We ask Andrew Firth our 3 Questions:
1 Why did you first start in business?
After
gaining my MBA whilst working as a manager in an engineering firm I was
keen to use my qualifications to the full. Unfortunately the
engineering firm, at the time, didn’t resonate with my passion for
marketing, staff engagement and all of the other areas of business that I
was excited about and I left to join a small design and print company.
Over the next five years, ultimately as Managing Director, we grew that
business significantly. We heavily embraced online technologies,
developing solutions for clients and also building up our own successful
wholesale and online retail business. The next logical step was to
start out on my own to do it again for myself and I’ve never looked
back.
2 What are your biggest business challenges?
The
old adage is so true, it is so important to manage cash-flow. As costs
increase with sales, as projects get bigger and take longer to deliver
and as the wages bill increases, on paper the figures can look excellent
but that means nothing if the pot is empty. Very successful businesses
fail because they don’t have working capital and when we first started
out we gave as much credit as we could and our debtor days were far too
high. Over the years we have had to get more and more focussed on
structured payments around deliverables, setting milestones for interim
payments and managing our debtor days down.
3 What do you like most about what you do?
My
main focus with Ascensor is working with our clients to help them to
grow their businesses using the internet. I have grown to love the power
of marketing, I am still very involved in the marketing of Ascensor,
but most of all I love helping our clients to see ways
of marketing their business, product or service on the internet and
seeing the return on investment in quantifiable amounts.
Thank you very much for your time Andrew! We hope you enjoyed answering our questions. If you want to get in touch you can find Andrew and Ascensor on Twitter @andrewjfirth and @ascensor
If you want to answer our 3 Questions please get in touch! You can find the other 3 Questions interviews in our blog.