A North Tyneside digital agency will soon be scaling up its operations with the help of a five-figure investment.
New Horizon Marketing, based in Whitley Bay, delivers organic and paid-for search campaigns for a range of clients across both national and international markets.
The firm was established last year by Joaquin Morales, who moved to the North East from southern Spain with his family and spent several years working for regional marketing agencies before setting up his own business.
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Since launching, the firm has already worked with the likes of engineering group Thyssenkrupp, international swimwear business Arena and European destination management firm Eventisimo.
Now Mr Morales has worked with regional fund management firm NEL Fund Managers to bring in the £24,000 investment from the North East Small Loan Fund, which is supported by the European Regional Development Fund.
He aims to use the funds to help the business double its client base in the next 12 months and to then do the same again over the following two years. Two new jobs are expected to be created, and a new creative director has already been taken on.
Mr Morales said: “When we were looking for somewhere to settle, North East England felt like it offered more opportunities than other parts of the country and the decision to move here has worked out very well for us.
“We take an agile, flexible approach to our business structure which allows us to put the required resources in place for each individual project or client campaign, and the success we’ve enjoyed so far shows how well this business model works for our industry.
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“The benefits of working entirely online have been made very apparent over the last couple of months and we’re in a good position to continue with our business growth plans as we’d always intended.
“We wanted to bring in outside investment to accelerate the growth of the business and working with NEL made acquiring it a very straightforward process.”
Part of the £120m North East Fund and aimed predominantly at smaller SMEs, the £9m North East Small Loan Fund typically offers loans of between £10,000 and £100,000 to businesses in Tyne and Wear, County Durham and Northumberland.
It is designed to assist with the creation of over 1,200 new regional jobs in more than 320 SMEs over the life of the fund.
Mike Guellard, investment executive at NEL Fund Managers, added: “New Horizon has a very clear growth strategy in place, as well as the commercial and technical skills required to execute it, and we’re looking forward to seeing how the business evolves.”