About NOVOS
We’re making SEO simple for eCommerce brands. We deliver an organic growth strategy, then help you to action it.
Meet the Team
Before setting up NOVOS, Sam headed up SEO for Made.com across all major European markets. His achievements include growing Made's non-brand SEO traffic by over £10.4million, you'll hear him say this about 100 times in the first 3 months of working with us. He's also an award-winning SEO but we try not to brag about that despite again, him mentioning it every other day. Sam is an eCommerce SEO veteran.
Before setting up NOVOS, Antonio led the digital growth at luxury men’s publication Gentleman’s Journal where he brought value from declining print sales to huge online subscription revenue growth. Antonio has also worked agency-side before, where his global viral campaign “Find the missing Easter Egg” with Bloom & Wild set him up for life. He still talks about it today. Antonio was shortlised for (but didn't win) the Young Entrepreneur of the Year at the Great British Entrepreneur Awards and The Drum Rising Star, but he's a UK & Global Search Award winner so it balances out – you’re in good hands here.
Olivia is our Operations Director. Having joined NOVOS as a Digital PR Manager in 2019, she's really progressed through the ranks and is everything that NOVOS is about. Equally, she just doesn't really like Digital PR anymore so we had to find something for her to do. Olivia makes sure the business is running smoothly day-to-day and that we're a great place to work, and even though she's on calls or in meetings for 8 hours a day, she's able to make time for everyone elses problems & lead the agency, this specifically happens in an hour slot of 5-6pm which is fully booked quicker than an Ocado delivery.
Dan is our Delivery Director. Having joined NOVOS as an SEO Manager in 2019, he's fast become essential to the day-to-day running of the team. He is also phenomenal at solving client problems and knowing exactly the high standards we want to deliver. In his spare time he has his puppy Jasper, likes to run, and also supports QPR which is almost as bad as Richard supporting Watford. Dan is the only man we know who can go transparent. Everyone also says Dan is "really nice" but that depends on whether QPR won the day before or not. If you're not best pleased about a particular area of our service, just blame Dan.
Our Story
2017
statement.digital
statement.digital was set up, operating as a side hustle while Sam was still at Made.com and Antonio at Gentleman’s Journal. The name was pivoted from another side hustle which was a men’s accessories website called Statement Accessories.
Once the marketing started getting too expensive we started freelancing. The freelancing was making money, the accessories site was losing money so it was a no brainer to focus our attention on statement.digital.
2018
Antonio quits
Antonio quits Gentleman’s Journal to work on statement.digital full time in March. Sam finishes at Made.com in December 2018. It’s clear here which of the two works harder on NOVOS.
After an intense year of working every weekend, many long nights, juggling a full-time job and 10 clients, we can now both dedicate our full attention to our business.
…but first…
We go to Madrid for a long weekend to celebrate! Sam then buggers off to Asia for 2 weeks so the business will have to wait until 2019…..
2020
COVID Hits
COVID Hits Coronavirus hits the UK hard & we all get used to working from home. We’re fortunate to still grow through covid and make 2 more hires in the Strategy team. We had to onboard them remotely which was a challenge!
Lockdown eases and culture days return Lockdown starts to ease so we start to go to the office more with more cultural days in the evening.
We win 3 awards in a week:
Best use of SEO in eCommerce at the Global Search Awards with Bloom & Wild
Best Small SEO Agency at the Global Search Awards
Best SEO Agency at the Global Search Awards
And more awards More awards!
This time a DADI from The Drum & the UK search award for best use of search in e-com. Boom. Not bad right? We celebrate with a bottle of Dom at the rack & t. A fine establishment for such a tipple.
2019
Sam & Antonio work together
2019 is the first year both Sam & Antonio work on statement.digital together.
We start January in ‘freelancer’ / ‘consultancy’ mode by working from home with no proper routine but we soon realise this isn’t for us and we need to get an office. We move into co-working space Huckletree.
March 2019 was one of the biggest changes ever for the business.
Rebrand
We rebrand the company from statement.digital to NOVOS. “Novo” means ‘New’ in Portuguese. Then we added an S as SONOS did to Sono. If it works for them it’ll work for us. It’ll do, basically.
This symbolises a new start for us as we now decide to hit growth hard and build NOVOS into a full-service SEO agency. To do this we need to start hiring… We hire Nicole and Maddy as our first 2 employees- Nicole is still with us today!
Growth
After an intense few months of growth, we invest heavily in 3 new employees, a leadership team for the agency and our first private office at Citypoint. Nicole quickly discovers there’s no microwave…so we hand in our notice not long after it. Growth continues and we put out 4 new job adverts after working with some amazing brands. We also go on our first trip to NYC to see our US clients.
2021
We become a million pound agency and Tom G becomes a dad!
Despite lockdown 4.0 (or 3.0? lost count at this point), we continue to grow and aim to hire at least 7 new people. We do 4 perfect migrations in a week and no one really acknowledges it – business as usual now?
There’s a light at the end of the lockdown tunnel and we start planning an office return. We hit some big milestones: exactly 2 years since we hired our first 2 employees we hit a £1,000,000 agency with 20+ staff. Not bad with no investment… Oh and Tom G has a baby, that’s way more interesting!
We’ve also started the 2021 award season in style like we did with 2020 – winning a Drum Search Award for Best use of Search in eCom, we’ve been featured in the 100 best workplaces, top 100 fastest growing global companies & classed as a Best Place To Work 2021. It’s been a good quarter!
Christmas!
We rounded up the year with our biggest Christmas Party yet – we rented out a whole area at Bounce and had a great time. Everyone wanted to play against Antonio to try and prove they can beat him, no one in fact did.
2022
We become employee-owned!
Antonio & Sam announce at an all-team offsite event that they are selling the majority of their shares to an employee ownership trust, we’re officially about to become employee owned!
On the 10th March 2022, we then became employee-owned and the Trust was set up with Antonio, Laura Brady and Karl becoming our first 3 trustees. This is the start of a new process and chapter for NOVOS with a lot to learn, but a dream fulfilled by both Antonio & Sam to go from being a people-first agency, to a people-led agency. Here they are signing contracts looking like a couple that just married.
2023
Where we are now!
NOVOS has now grown to a team of 40 employees, we’ve worked with over 200 eCommerce brands across multiple international markets. We’ve grown 100% YoY since we launched, all whilst keeping one thing consistent: our people-first mindset. In 2022 we became an employee-owned company, meaning you’re part of a better business doing good for society.
We have won some impressive awards, including The Global Agency Awards eCommerce Agency of the year!
As we have internally adjusted into our first year of becoming Employee Owned, the People Committee has grown and worked on important initiatives and changes to develop NOVOS culture and reflect our values. We have also had our first annual tax free bonus!
We have sponsored a few events and joined roundtables with our core partners, as well as hosting our first annual eCommerce Event for retailers!
Our very own monthly eCommerce newsletter started in September, and we launched our first NOVOS Podcast called Founder to Leader (available on all streaming platforms!).
We have lots more planned for 2024 so watch this space!