Angelfysh in seventh heaven at award win

Dec 18 2007 by Chris Knox, The Journal

A SMALL internet marketing business has beaten an international competitor to a coveted industry award, despite having its turnover dwarfed by the rival.

Newcastle firm angelfysh, which employs two staff and has a turnover of £100,000, picked up the top prize in the Freshest Web Hosting category of the 2007 Fresh Digital Awards ahead of Reading Room, an international competitor which employs 145 staff and has a turnover of more than £6m.

Although 10-month-old angelfysh was confident that it had a chance in the run-up to the awards, held in London’s Hilton Hotel, its managing director Lisa Forster was nevertheless blown away by the judges’ decision.

She said: “I’m delighted to have won the award. Angelfysh is a very young company and it’s a fantastic achievement to win this award, particularly when the competition has been trading for 11 years and has offices across the world.”

Angelfysh offers web hosting, domains and email accounts and works with companies to increase their search engine optimisation (SEO).

Lisa hopes that the firm’s involvement with the awards will help it attract the publicity it needs to help increase its £100,000 turnover by 50% year-on-year going forward.

The firm has already established a number of clients in the North-East, including Wet ’n’ Wild water park in North Shields, Newcastle Cathedral and enterprise investment company NStar.

It is owned by Newcastle-based design company onebestway, which set up the company specifically for Lisa after being impressed with her freelance work.

Lisa, 36, who lives in St Peter’s Basin, Newcastle, has worked in the SEO and IT industry for several years and has also worked part-time exploring ways that websites can attract traffic.

She has worked on Google Adwords campaigns for businesses all over the world but took on web hosting only 10 months ago.

She said: “I’m a female entrepreneur in a field which is usually dominated by men, and as angelfysh has only been in business for 10 months, it is incredible to be given this level of recognition at such an early stage.”