Blue Fish Business Promotions
Operating from premises in Victoria, Blue Fish has grown in just 3 years to become one of the UK's leading business promotions companies.
The company specialises in business gifts and promotional merchandise, such as pens, mouse mats, clothing and all the latest technology gadgets.
The client list is varied, including Unilever and Royal Sun Insurance as well as local businesses such as St Austell Brewery.
Director Marc Penn says “We signed up to broadband on the first day our exchange became broadband enabled in September 2003. Broadband is absolutely crucial to what we do. We need to send large files with design ideas and visuals to clients. Also being ‘always on’ means that we can always respond to any queries from clients straight away.”
Through the actnow accelerator programme, Blue Fish received £4000 to develop a high quality database driven website, central to its progressive e-marketing strategy. By identifying, then marketing uncommon ‘fringe’ products via Search Engine Optimisation, Pay Per Click and emarketing campaigns, the company has successfully targeted high-calibre corporate clients looking to source creative promotional items from across the UK and beyond.
“The financial help from actnow allowed us to radically improve our website much sooner than we would have been able to do otherwise” says Marc.
The implementation of a bespoke enquiry and order management system, tied directly into the website and database, have generated a wealth of powerful information for use as a knowledge base by the sales team, and a management information tool by Marc.
Sales activity can be checked real-time for productivity, conversion rates and profitability across sales staff, supply chains and product ranges. Web-based customer service programmes were also developed to ensure communication with clients remained seamless, no matter where they were in the world.
The use of technology throughout Blue Fish has enabled them on an ongoing basis to capture high value key accounts, previously managed by established ‘market leading’ competitors.
This has seen major national and multi-national organisations choosing to do business with Blue Fish Business Promotions in what is an extremely competitive and crowded marketplace.
The benefits brought about by the use of technology have seen the business flourish, with turnover growing from just £120k with 3 staff in 2003/4, to almost £1m and 11 staff in 2005/6. Marc says:
“By placing technology at the heart of our business, I have been able to engineer myself out of the day to day operations of the business in terms of handling sales and enquiries and spend much more time focussing on analysis of what’s actually happening in the business – those factors that affect our profitability and the bottom line.
In summary, the use of technology and back office systems has allowed us to grow significantly in our marketplace and compete with national and international players in a short space of time and not only that, we’ve been able to do it from a great location here in Cornwall.”
