The Applecado blog

Turning Ten

TAGS TEN

10 year party cake

Ten years – that’s a lot of cake, and probably way too much coffee! Read what we've been thinking about as we start the next ten years.

Thank you!

We can’t go any further before we thank everyone we’ve worked with over the past decade, everyone who has helped and supported us over the years. We are so grateful to all of our clients who have trusted their start-ups or their businesses with us.

Coffee and cake

Applecado was started in early 2010, mid-recession felt like a daunting place to be starting a business but Alex (our MD and lead developer) felt really passionate about it and that the time was right. Alex had worked in a variety of agencies, from small boutique agencies to one of the UK’s top ten agencies, leading teams and heading up high-profile development projects – but he always felt like there was a better way to work.

Initially Applecado was set up to provide reliable extra development resource to agencies – an agency’s agency if you like. We wanted to be there to support agencies with their projects after launch, for the long term.

Quality is the most important thing to us, and our focus has always been on delivering the best solution for any client, and we’ve always continued to deliver the best quality code – secure and robust, and long-lasting.

Since then, while whitelabel still remains a part of our business – we have adapted to take on more complete projects. We’re able to put our years of expertise into practice and help clients through all stages of planning, design, build, and to support them after launch. We’re really proud of the hundreds of companies we’ve helped over the last ten years, and it’s so rewarding when we get to work again with anyone, evolving what we built before to bring even more great features – it’s the super thing about creating bespoke platforms.

These ten years have been a real rollercoaster of ups and downs…

sometimes more literally than others as this picture demonstrates (Alex and Nicky went to meet with a new client who just happened to be opposite Thorpe Park – have you ever been to a theme park in business dress?)!

Rollercoasters and magazines

We have stood the test of time, keeping up with the changing web – responsive web design, apps, data processing regulations, and watching all sorts of design trends come and go!

Our development projects have seen various magazine features, we’ve even partnered with celebs (ohhh, I know showing off now!) to bring you Nerdy Day Trips.

We’ve been awarded North Hampshire’s Best Web Development Agency, which was nice, but it’s even nicer teaming up and seeing our clients go through their successes.

Whilst our team has both grown and shrunk over time, we want to make sure everyone who has worked with us knows they’re really appreciated.

Cakes, crowns and hats

Personally, we’ve taken up some new hobbies in the last ten years too. We’ve worked as hard at those as we do the day job, we’ve had the highs of winning leagues and trophies, and drivers’ championships, and heartbreak of writing off our race car and having to build it back up again.

As we write our ten year thoughts, we’re in the midst of a global pandemic, times are stranger than they were when we first started, but we’re working hard behind the scenes helping clients adjust – and we’ll be ready to build it back up again too.

Applecado office snaps