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SUB36 By Rob Kelly
Tom Grattan TOM’S GOT GRAND DESIGNS
If you are looking for someone that embodies Sub36 look no further than Tom Grattan, managing director of Lancaster-based brand and design consultancy EXP.
Tom beat off stiff competition to scoop our Young’Uns Business of the Year award – Young’Uns was the brand that preceded Sub36 – in 2015 and then went on to give it a complete makeover.
Two years after lifting his award he worked alongside Lancashire Business View on the rebrand that led to Sub36, designed to recognise the best up-and-coming talent across the county.
Tom says: “I think it was only my second-year trading as a limited company when we went in for the award. We were having a good year for growth and thankfully won.
“I would have been 22 at the time. It was a really nice start to a business career.
“However, I thought Young’Uns was potentially an off-putting name for some younger people in business.”
It was a position he brought to the attention of the magazine and conversations progressed from there.
“So we relaunched it,” he says, “and came up with something a bit sleeker and modern and more age appropriate.”
Tom was named as a Sub36 ‘One to Watch’ last
year and his business came away with a Red Rose Award in 2023.
The 33-year-old started a marketing and design course at Lancaster University but working on projects for small businesses took him on different career path.
He says: “After I’d done a year of full-time employment I just was sitting in lectures with around 300 people and I thought ‘I could be earning money’.
“So, after two terms at Lancaster, I dropped
Factored before a rebrand two years ago to become EXP Consultancy.
EXP has seen growth and in the next five years Tom wants it to continue. He says: “We are a team of eight and that has come from a team of four last year.
“We set a 10-year plan when we rebranded. We wanted the business to get to a size where it is recognised in industry, working with household brands and recognised names, and getting the sort of recognition by the industry and peers as an agency doing good work.
It is interesting that when you set up a business
at a young age and you don’t have a mortgage you take risks because you have less to lose
out, continued with the work and found a business partner in 2015 after winning the Young’Uns award.
“We have grown the business organically. It has been quite slow, and the pandemic changed things a bit.
“We now have a better strategy in place, we are focused on growth and we are doing quite well.
“It was good to come full circle. Four years ago Lancaster University became a client.”
Tom started his business under the name
“We are doing well with that. We work with a B2B client James Cropper, which does work internationally and we were fortunate to launch campaigns in Monaco and Milan, and we went out there to do that. It was satisfying being a smaller team and still having an impact.”
He adds: “The business is a manufacturer of paper and packaging and it sounds on the face of it quite functional but when we were at those shows there were luxury brands such as Armani and Versace.”
The pace of tech development with AI is
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