An eCommerce development agency is set to hit 拢1 million turnover after becoming one of only 20 Shopify Plus Partners in the UK.
Manchester-based Rainy City Agency, founded and led by MD Rebecca Worsley, has been bootstrapped since inception in 2017 and never made a loss.
It specialises in providing creative, high performing websites in the health, beauty and lifestyle sector using the Shopify Plus platform. To date it has helped 500 brands 鈥榯o succeed online鈥�.
鈥淲e like to work alongside brands over the long-term as a proactive partnership on the lookout for opportunities in the market,鈥� Worsley tells 老九品茶Cloud. 鈥淲e’re not just a regular 鈥榯o-do list鈥� dev agency – we care about our brands and their growth.
鈥淟ast year we turned over 拢630k, which was double the turnover from 2020, and are on track to hit the 拢1m mark for 2022.
鈥淲e鈥檝e never been through fundraising – it鈥檚 been totally organic growth and all self-funded. I鈥檓 not sure if we鈥檒l go through fundraising in the future, but for now we鈥檙e good as we are.鈥�
Projects consist of full website redesigns or replatforming over to Shopify from other content management systems. Following its successful application to the Shopify Plus Partners scheme, the agency will now benefit from referrals and quarterly performance insights, while high-end merchants will enjoy enhanced testing and demo services around new stores in development.
鈥淚t will allow us to target more health, beauty and lifestyle eCommerce businesses that want to scale up their operations, build their brand and take sales performance to the next level,鈥� says Worsley, the only female founder in the Shopify Plus UK community.
She adds: 鈥淚 am really passionate about bringing more women into tech – it鈥檚 a fantastic industry and needs to attract more female talent. We’re going to be putting a heavy focus on women in tech [as] our industry is very male dominated.鈥�
Rainy City, named after Manchester鈥檚 notorious weather, is planning to bring events to the city’s tech scene to help change this.
鈥淚’ve often been to events and been the only female there,鈥� explains Worsley. 鈥淚 want to encourage female entrepreneurs, coders, designers – everyone that works in our industry.聽
鈥淥ur team is actually made up of 10 females out of the 18 we have employed so we’re doing pretty well in terms of balance!
鈥淭here’s a lot of great talent and tech in the city, but we don’t have a big presence for Shopify and its merchants and that’s something we’re going to change.聽
鈥淲e’ll be hosting our first Shopify Meetup in Manchester city centre in the autumn – think amazing industry insights, AMA panels and of course a 鈥榟appy hour鈥� for the chance to network and learn from each other!聽
鈥淲e’re hoping this is just the start for us and events and will really help us create a name for ourselves in the North West.鈥�
Rainy City is also developing a Shopify theme which is expected to be finished and ready for purchase by October.
鈥淚t makes sense for us to branch into this – we work with the themes on a daily basis and know what our merchants’ pain points are with using them so we’re hoping this will be a great extension of what we already do,鈥� says Worsley.
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