Starting a new business is both exciting and a challenge. And since starting Wolfstar it’s certainly been a roller coaster ride. I’d been planning to to write a post about our first year, when we’d actually got to the end of it. But some recent changes at Wolfstar have made me think that now’s probably a good time to give a quick summary.
Wolfstar started in April 2007 with four founders:
Stuart Bruce, director: a partner in Bruce Marshall Associates, with a background mainly in traditional corporate relations, B2B and public sector public relations who has more recently specialised in social media, online PR and digital marketing.
Susie Lawrence, director: a freelance PR consultant, with a background of working in big London PR agencies working on mainly consumer brands.
Kirstyn Pollard, director: a director of Raw Creative, Wolfstar’s sister design and brand consultancy with a track record of working for big consumer brands and a wealth of experience in the property sector. Kirstyn was also previously the editor of PAD magazine.
Tim Sinclair, director: the founder of Sinclair Mason, which he grew into one of the north’s largest integrated corporate marketing communications companies, before selling it to the Huntsworth Group to become the northern office of Trimedia Harrison Cowley.
At the start it was only Susie and myself that were active in the business as Tim was still on his earn-out period from Huntsworth and finally became active in the business in September. After a great start in the first couple of months, things slowed down significantly, with the main barrier for growth that that we were spending most of our time on servicing existing client projects.
The Wolfstar team has now grown with account manager Sebastian Mysko onboard from the start, account executive Beth Kay joined us in July and account director Chris Norton started in November. In November Susie also took the decision to leave and pursue other interests.
New management structure
This month we’ve introduced a new management structure in Wolfstar.
I’ve taken on the role of managing director to lead and direct the growth and development of the business.
Tim has become chairman whose primary responsibilities are to use his experience of growing a big marketing communications business and to take a lead in identifying new business prospects. Becoming chairman also reflects the fact that Tim has a number of other business interests including being the chief executive of WOM UK, the new association for the word of mouth marketing and communications industry.
Kirstyn is also taking a much more hands on role in Wolfstar and I’m taking on responsibilities with Raw so that the two businesses provide an integrated corporate communications service to clients.
Finally Karen Bruce, my wife and a partner in Bruce Marshall Associates, is starting to finish her maternity leave and is able to join Wolfstar to significantly strengthen our public sector, event management and community relations capability.
New client wins
I’d also like to be able to announce a couple of new client wins, but both are still too new to be able to talk about them much. One is a social media project for a big consumer brand in Europe and the other is a stakeholder relations campaign for a public sector organisation. Subscribe to the blog to find out more!
XP: Wolfstar blog
