About NOVOS
We’re making SEO simple for eCommerce brands. We deliver an organic growth strategy, then help you to action it.
What the team are best at
NOVOS exists as a vehicle for client and employee growth. Each month we track happiness of employees and clients to ensure they align.
Strategy & Consultancy
We're your outsourced SEO team. We'll tell you where the opportunity is and how to capitalise on it. We'll then hold your hand to ensure it's implemented correctly (or if you're not much of a hand-holder, that's cool too, we know when not to get too close).
Content & Digital PR
We create content & campaigns that attract new customers. All of our creative is driven by data & strategy.
Migrations
We'll help you to migrate across eCommerce platforms and ensure you're set up to scale the new platform so that the investment was worth 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’s 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. A Drum Rising Star runner-up(yep, not even a winner), but a UK & Global Search Award winner, 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. Olivia is also scarily similar to Antonio and often they'll say the same thing at the same time – we still don't know what this is about, and are convinced they're telepathically connected somehow.
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
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.
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.
We go to Madrid
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…..
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.
We soon realise this isn’t for us and we need to get an office. We move into co-working space Huckletree. A massive commitment for us at the time, to pay for a desk when we have one at home that works just fine. So we understand how hard it is to pay for something for the first time…
NOVOS
March 2019 was one of the biggest changes ever for the business.
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!
Portfolio of brands
The concept is proven, we now start to scale the business and have an epic portfolio of brands with us on the NOVOS journey as we build our name in the industry.
Dog
Sam gets a dog & spams the About Us page.
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.
First private office
We then move into our first private office at Citypoint.
Nicole quickly discovers there’s no microwave…so we hand in our notice not long after it.
Dan starts acting a bit odd
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.
Dan starts acting a bit odd.
New level
Georgia joins the PR team & Hollie joins as our inhouse content producer, & their work has taken our PR & production to a whole new level.
COVID Hits
Coronavirus hits the UK hard & we all get used to working from home.
We get some great headshots of the team on video calls, & we’re sure there are some HR issues here but we’ll look over this for now.
More hires!
We’re fortunate to still grow through covid with Tom and Laura joining us in the Strategy team. We had to onboard them remotely which was a challenge!
Little did we know Laura’s obsessed with Sistrix and must work on commission.
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
Dan is still at it
Dan continues to act a bit odd. His latest activities involve wearing a tux to the office for no reason and going transparent
Awards
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.
Lockdown 2.0
We’re free! But not for long as Lockdown 2.0 hits and we go back to our homes. To keep up fitness and to encourage people to get outdoors we launch The Autumn Awards where people submit pictures of their walk for prizes. Laura wins. We also start to pay for the teams personal training sessions and hire a ‘head of fitness’, Ollie (again looks nothing like this picture).
Xmas is cancelled
December’s a write-off. Xmas is cancelled.
To get home to her beloved Sheffield – Nicole gets herself into a mass brawl at Kings Cross – the picture on the right is her mid-battle. She loves it (actually didn’t happen).
Despite lockdown, Dan somehow figures out a way to go transparent and goes into full Ghost mode (actually did happen).
Another lockdown and more hiring
January 2021: There’s no light at the end of the lockdown tunnel. The world goes mad.
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?
We launch 2 epic team groups:
- Dungeons and Dragons (I know right, full nerd mode!)
- Spanish lessons with Mira (I know right, how cool is that?)
We become a million pound agency and Tom G becomes a dad
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 Nicole + Maddy 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 decorate our new office
We decided to sign a lease for our largest office in Aldgate and embark on a whole new renovation to brand it the NOVOS way. Sam & Laura lead this, as apparently, they’re the design snobs at the company.
We hire rapidly with James, Paul, Chloe C, Chloe B & Amy all joining.
As lockdown restrictions ease, more people come to the office as renovation slowly come to an end. Our HR guy, Simon, ensures windows are open, hand sanitiser is everywhere, wipes & lots of lateral flow tests are present. Thanks, Simon.
We also start working with Not on the high street – what a win!!
We’ve also just closed our last financial year at over a £1m agency. Amazing to see the growth from the start, when Antonio & Sam were slacking in Madrid, to now.
More awards
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!
We win awards for our company culture
We sponsor a football team
We announced 2 massive sponsorships.
NOVOS sponsors its first football team. I know right, huge.
With the slow demoralising decline of Swansea City, the all-round uselessness of Cardiff City and Ryan Reynolds Wrexham, the only competition, it’s safe to say we sponsored the best football team in Wales: BrynRovers.
Sam’s cousin, Rachel, models the new kit here.
Available from all major sports retailers by September 2021.
We sponsor a football team
And we sponsor the Women in Tech SEO podcast
The second announcement is a bit more serious. We are very proud to have sponsored the Women in Tech SEO podcast and to support Areej + Sarah with their great community. Laura does a talk about all things eCommerce SEO — listen here
Christmas party
We have 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.
New heads of
We open up new Head of SEO and Head of PR positions both internally and externally, and we end up promoting Tom G to Head of SEO and Mark to Head of PR! Both smashed their interviews and are the ones to take us to our next stage of growth.
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 become employee-owned and the Trust is 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…
Sam announces he's having a baby
Despite all of the difficult news currently with the cost of living crisis etc, we get some great news with Sam announcing he’s due to have his first baby towards the end of the year. NOVOS baby grows at the ready!
Mark has a baby
So many NOVOS babies now, it’s awesome. Mark goes on Paternity Leave for a month and the PR team are left in shock as to how to work in his absence… until they get used to it and he’s already back again.
Nine & Laura both promoted to Head of roles
Nine who joined us as content lead in 2021 is promoted to Head of Operations to work closely with Olivia in the team, and Laura is promoted to Head of Client Services to bolster the way we deliver to and value-add to clients.
We're eCommerce specialists for a reason, get in touch with us today and find out more.