Our company history
How it all began
Technically it all started in 1984, when Ben joined Simon's primary school in Stroud. At secondary school James Brown, Simon Jackson and Ben Jeffery became friends. We don't claim to have been producing websites and writing business plans in our teenage years, but that's where it all started. After school and university, we each worked in different areas and it wasn't until 2001 that we decided to start Bluelinemedia in Cheltenham.
Why we did it
The strongest reason for starting our own business was being able to say yes. Put another way, we wanted a job which gave us the responsibility to deal with people directly, to find out what they needed, say we could do it, and then apply our individual skills to getting the job done. We were also aware of a lot of cynicism around the internet, mainly resulting from excessive hype in the beginning and over-designed, under-performing websites. Quite simply, we wanted to produce websites that worked.
From little acorns
We produced our first websites in 2001, mostly working for relatives or friends of friends to build our portfolio and experience. In the beginning, we worked part-time to keep the inevitable new business pressures to a minimum. This allowed us to grow quite gradually and build our business from our work and our reputation, while learning a lot about what clients wanted from us along the way.
Finding our feet
"We have been dealing with Bluelinemedia for almost three years and you have been an absolute pleasure to work with."
Eurax Ltd
Over the following months, our business developed fairly quickly on the back of new clients and repeat work from our existing clients. We knew that if we were getting ongoing work from our clients, we must be doing something right. We also got to know a lot of local businesses through networking and other business events, and built a reputation for functional, software-driven websites. Before long all three of us were employed full-time and we set up Bluelinemedia as a limited company.
New faces
In 2005, our continued growth meant we needed extra employees to help with our client workload and the day-to-day administration of a busy company. The roles of the three directors became more based around management and client relationships, and we have steadily increased our development and design staff to meet our growing customer base.
Steady growth
Our client base has continuously grown, and we know that it is our client relationships that keep us in business. Our turnover is doubling each year and around a third of our work comes from existing clients. We don't have a particular niche of clients in terms of industry, because we like to think that our approach of combining your business expertise with our web experience means we can work with anyone. We also provide a growing specialised support service to other graphic and web designers.
Happy clients
"90% of our enquiries are coming from the internet now. We've had a look at other local sites and ours is definitely the best."
Orchard Catering
We know that we are only as good as our last job, and that it is relationships that really make our websites work. If we can work closely with you to project your business online, and ensure that your key goals are met in the process, then we will continue to be successful. We are proud to have such a broad mix of clients, and take great enjoyment from our personal contact with them. We will continue to develop our services and relationships, and hope to grow alongside our customers.
