Company history

A Brief History of Business Change
 

2002 - Peter Ballard and Tom Wood start Foolproof with little money and no clients. Win our first clients: thank you Richard Searle at Nationwide and Andy Muddimer at A&L

2003 - Working in a Portakabin in the garden of a design agency in Norwich: thank you to the guys at Soup. Hire our first people: thank you Ben Whattam and Sarah Duddle

2004 - Move to a proper office in Norwich. Tim Loo and Marc Oldman join the team, which is now up to about 10 people: thank you to these guys and everyone who has taken a chance on us down the years

2005 - Stage our first international fieldwork: thank you HSBC

2006 - Open the first London office, which Tim runs. Ray McCune joins us and persuades us that acquiring new clients is a profession rather than a hobby. Start hiring like it’s going out of fashion

2007 - Upgrade! Swanky new office in Norwich. Our fifth birthday party is still talked about in these parts: thank you vodka luge carving man

2008 - Upgrade! Swanky new office in London. Nick Hatton joins the management team. Some nasty clouds appear on the economic horizon: thank you Lehman Brothers et al

2009 - A perfectly successful year, but not a lot of fun. Thank you everyone at Foolproof who showed such commitment during the worst of the recession. Did some ground-breaking work in research using social media: thank you Stephen Doran at Direct Line

2010 - Putting that nasty recession behind us, we had our most successful year to date. We also flirted with industry awards for the first time shortlisted for NMA, MRS and Econsultancy Innovation gongs and scooping a Global Business Excellence prize

2011 - Upgrade! We got off to a flyer with the news that we joined forces with Flow making us Europe’s largest UX agency. Leslie Fountain and Steve Abbis join the management team.
 

2012 - Seriously? Another recession? Ho hum. We’re still optimistic about the year ahead with an invigorated Flow doing some cracking work and exciting things happening in mobile, NFC and UX strategy. There will also be the small matter of our tenth birthday party. Think about your outfit early.

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