Client successes and agency goals
Unbranded’s specialist approach helped it to successful projects with clients including Mobility Compare, Machine Compare and Foilco.
Machine Compare, the Manchester-based marketplace for new and used machinery, came to Unbranded Manchester for an MVP build. “That platform now hosts over £1 billion worth of products on it,” Hamad told Prolific North, “and it’s fully automated.”
Automation means that without administrators needing to manage it, users can buy banner ads, add listings, host webinars, run auctions and buy products. “It’s a self-encompassed community.”
For Foilco, Unbranded Manchester managed to save the company an initial £200,000 with more savings following it, while boosting market visibility from 22% to 49%.
Its approach was novel. Unbranded wanted to save time and effort on the part of the sales team by offering a way for buyers to see different types of foil from a single image. Working with integrated creative agency Chaos, all foil products were 3D scanned and added to a library, eliminating the need to send physical samples.
Hamad said that on top of the tangible benefits of their work, “we couldn’t measure how much time sales staff had saved, or how much time even a receptionist had saved from having to deal with this”.
Looking to the future, Hamad isn’t interested in massive growth in headcount as Unbranded Manchester focuses more on “improving efficiency so we can pay higher-than-average salaries”.
Its routine involves often hitting capacity, then taking a step back to look at what they’re doing and once again completing an internal review process to see what can be automated.
Most recently, Unbranded launched a new platform to streamline the pitching process – collecting data from the potential client and using AI to build out proposals with insights, data and competitor strategies.
It is now working to grow slowly and intentionally, recently bringing in a new senior developer, with another on the way. “It will enable us to take on more challenging work in terms of what we do,” Hamad added. “Not because there’s a need for them in terms of workflow, [but] because we want to do a hell of a lot more.
“What we want is a very niche, talented pool of teammates, who work on select projects and create value from the work we do.”
‘Anything we build is naturally fast and scalable’
Hamad’s own background saw him graduate with a degree in Computer Science from the University of Manchester, before going to Korea to start teaching. When he returned, he knew he wasn’t someone to work for a large cooperate or tech company. He always wanted his own business. Starting the agency, therefore, “made sense… it’s all I’ve ever done and achieved this from continually evolving and adapting.”
Soon, Hamad realised the entire market was “lacking formally trained programmers who understood the entire arena of programming”.
Unbranded Manchester’s focus has been on identifying talent that know how to programme efficiently, sustainably and responsibly. “The performance of the web comes naturally to the programmers I’ve hired,” he said. “Whenever we were building anything, it was naturally fast and naturally scalable.”
He sees it as vitally important that programmers understand the fundamentals of their work and its potential impact. “My fear is that we’re potentially evolving into an industry where it’s just stuff that works instead of stuff that works the best it possibly can,” he explained, looking at the significant possible environmental impact of programmers entering the workforce without a strong understanding of performance.
On the horizon for Unbranded
Unbranded Manchester is on a journey to define and redefine itself.
Once upon a time, Hamad said, the agency was excited by the fact it flew under the radar with its online presence. Now, however, “we need to demonstrate that everything we’re preaching other people should be doing – and everything we say about clients we work with – we’re practising that for ourselves.” It’s now about “making it abundantly clear why, when you come to us, it’s not just a website”.
Right now, the agency is “refining our proposition, using everything we’ve learnt on a regular basis on ourselves to constantly innovate and create new routes for ourselves and our clients.”
It is focusing on developing a reputation for design on top of impressive web development, as well as pushing the development of fully automated platforms that generate their own revenue – and the company can “scale up without having any additional developer interaction”, Hamad added.
“We’re a web agency, we make websites, but ultimately what we care about is revenue generation. Increasing profits for our clients is key.”
