Why we Love Working with Hampshire Businesses

Working with Hampshire, Southampton, Portsmouth, Bournemouth, all local businesses, seems like a no-brainer for any start-up in the area.

Local connections are where most businesses will start their trade and networks.

Whilst working locally may be a necessity for most businesses when starting out, we’ve found that there’s a greater reason as to why we want to focus on collaborating with businesses in Hampshire.

We love Southampton, the beautiful city is home to some of the most creative talent you will find in the United Kingdom. Pushing the boundaries with new to market products and services, these creative folks often require a digital strategy put together.

NoFace collaborates with Hampshire businesses, more specifically Southampton but also extending to Portsmouth, Bournemouth and Winchester, etc. We cover all facets of what a new or existing brand requires, including –

• Graphic Design
• Logo Design
• Website Design
• Website Development
• Marketing
• SEO

Our Process with Hampshire Businesses

All businesses share two things, the desire to maintain their existence, and that they all start at the same point (cultivating the idea of the business).

NoFace wants to work together with local businesses to help them grow from a concept to an operating business.

We show businesses the importance of the services that we offer, before investing the time and money in collaborating to build exciting and innovative products.

Once an ROI (Return on Investment) is made, and our clients see that their business benefits greatly as a result, we then continue our business relationship.

The continued relationship will often result in additional stages to a core product, tweaking and refining it to reach maximum performance. Alternatively, a customer may have a new product idea that we can help design and develop.

Why Local Businesses?

We believe that working with local businesses brings a sense of familiarity, as we are all a product of our environments. Hampshire has a certain charm to it, where like-minded creatives can come together to build high-quality end results.

Often design and development agencies look to work with established medium to enterprise-sized businesses, this is due to a few reasons, the budget of which will take a high priority over others.

We value customers equally, great ideas with small budgets is something that will excite us more than anything else.

We see the potential that local businesses have, most require some guidance to maximize their earnings and growth. NoFace plays that role in guidance and consults businesses based on their requirements and their vision.

Hampshire is Excelling in Technology Growth

When people think of Hampshire, they often think of the famous Solent docks, new-forest area and surrounding neighbouring cities such a Portsmouth and Winchester.

One thing that is often overlooked is the prevailing growth in technological focuses by creative people. Southampton alone is home to several creative agencies, both design and development. These agencies provide students fresh out of university with positions to grow and contribute to local and commercial projects.

We've included four statistics which we think sum up how well Southampton's creative technological fields are performing. With clear signs of growth, we're looking forward to seeing what the future holds for Southampton in the coming years.

Hampshire’s Inspirational and Innovative Environment

If we had the time, we would cover all the events you could attend in Hampshire but unfortunately, we’d be here forever. So, we thought we’d mention some of the events that we’ve been attending and would encourage you to attend.

WordPress Bournemouth

Although Bournemouth isn't located in Hampshire, it's a short train journey for most based in the area. WordPress Bournemouth is a monthly meetup that focuses on our CMS (Content Management System) of choice. We’ve got a whole page dedicated to WordPress, so we won’t go into what WordPress is.

If you know of WordPress or use WordPress to blog, or run your business with Wordpress, or include WordPress as part of your development stack then you could share your knowledge or passion surrounding the CMS at local events.

WordPress Bournemouth is a casual, informative, and inviting meetup which is FREE to attend. Often sponsored with free pizza when fortunate, the event is a wonderful place to grab a slice of pizza and learn something new that you can use in your everyday life.

The next event details are often shared in the WordPress Bournemouth ‘Meetup’ group.

Fullstack Hampshire

If you're based in Southampton, FSH or Fullstack Hampshire's a great community event that focuses on all aspects of development. Whether you are a Node developer, front-end developer, back-end developer or security specialist, you’ll feel right at home.

If you’re not a technical person, you may find Shareup Soton is more your cup of tea.

The lovely Spectrum IT recruitment team sponsor the event and is often host to a large supply of pizzas from Papa John’s at the beautiful offices of the Etch UK team.

To find out about the next event, keep your eye out on Eventbrite or follow their twitter page.

Shareup Soton

Shareup Soton is a real-life meetup for digital content creators to create commitments to one another that they will encourage one another to achieve.

Bloggers, film-makers, podcast recorders, comic book illustrators, music producers, designers, all great minds that have ideas, but sometimes lack the self-discipline to create.

At Shareup Soton you will be buddied up with another attendee. Once buddied up, you will make a commitment to achieve something by the next event (held monthly). Between events, you will be responsible for supporting your buddy in achieving their goal.

Here’s where it gets interesting. If you complete your goal then you win your choice of chocolate from the mountain of treats that are brought for those that achieve.

The event is held on the 2^nd Thursday of every month, usually at Etch UK’s offices with Ben Joy of Moov2 organising and hosting the events.

Check out the Shareup Soton website for more details on future events and commitments made.

Winchester Creatives

Winchester Creatives is a relaxed environment for all creatives. Previous talks have covered illustrator’s creative processes, advanced development stacks and the creation of WordPress frameworks and tools.

With free pizza provided by The Stable, and drinks covered by 'Studio Republic', you have no excuse not to attend if you are in Winchester.

If you do find it difficult to attend the events due to where you are based, or if life gets in the way then you can catch up with their events using their podcast series.

All presentations are recorded live with a lapel microphone and uploaded for listening anytime, anyplace.

Keep up-to-date with future events using the official Winchester Creatives website.

Hack Soton

Hack Soton is where all tech heads can come together as a community.

Fathers, mothers, daughters, sons, friends, colleagues, literally anyone that is or wants to get involved can attend.

There is a real sense of community at Hack Soton that we have yet to find anywhere else. You aren’t exposed to one side of the digital scene, instead, a hall full of the most curious and innovative minds Southampton can find.

There are no expectations of skills, there is no expectation to present, heck you don’t even need to bring lunch money with you.

Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner are  FREE.

As crazy as that sounds, it’s true. With the help of local sponsors of the event, attendees do not have to worry about the supply of drinks or food for themselves or their family. Instead, the day can be spent focusing on learning, sharing and encouraging passionate people to be creative.

Rounding it all up

In summary, we love Hampshire.

We want to see continued growth not only for the tech industry in the South of England. We also want to see a continuation in how local businesses continue to thrive and excel through collaboration with other businesses.

As we grow, we will begin periodically reviewing our involvement in the surrounding area and investigate ways in which we can collaborate with local events, educational organizations and with local businesses.