On April 1^st, Spectrecom turned 5 years old. Trading began in a small business unit at Faircharm Studios in Deptford with very limited funds, no staff and no customer base whatsoever.

Three friends from my university days, Sarah Aynesworth, Steve Milton and Steve Ryan, helped me form the company. From the outset our idea was to combine a corporate video production company with a studio operation. It was an unusual business model but it stood us in good stead. In that shaky first year, whilst we were slowly building up our corporate video client base, when we could barely afford the coffee bills, the studio accounted for over 50% of our business and kept us going.

Steve Ryan left Spectrecom in 2007 to focus on his own special interests in Bristol, but Sarah, Steve Milton and I remain. Over champagne to celebrate our anniversary, we rather un-modestly agreed a few achievements that I thought worth recording here.

We felt that by and large, we'd succeeded in our intention to put corporate responsibility at the heart of our business, leading to very positive and tangible environmental benefits and training outcomes. For example, we were thrilled when one of our trainees, Georgina Studd, won at the First Light Movie Awards last year.

Something else worthy of note, we've retained our core staff from the early days, and we're delighted that Ben, Christiaan, Pearl and Jonny are still with us.

We made a success of the video / studio model too, resulting in our recent expansion to new studio premises in central London here at Waterloo.

Of course, a business is nothing without it's customers. Over the years we've built up a fantastic client base, won some major awards (including IVCA Gold) and become the UK's undisputed leading producer of University Recruitment Videos. So to all of those clients who have helped Spectrecom become what it is today – a big thank you!

Naturally we recorded quite a few more achievements, but by the time we'd got onto celebrating the upgrade to a much larger stationery cupboard here at Waterloo (it really is spacious), it was felt we were scraping the barrel somewhat. So finally, we toasted Byron Barrett who took over the Faircharm Studio operation from us (now Live Vision Studios). Byron is starting out exactly as we did 5 years ago, combining studio operations with corporate video production, and we wish him the very best of luck.

 

Where it all started! Andrew's and Sarah's desks at the Faircharm Studio on 1 April 2005.