A niche design agency which focuses on PowerPoint presentations is planning to open offices in North America and Asia to triple its productivity via a 24-hour operation.
Buffalo 7’s design and development teams work entirely out of Manchester, while its commercial team operates in both Manchester and London, with an additional commercial centre opening in Yorkshire this month.
CEO Lyndon Nicholson told BusinessCloud that it will continue its rapid growth by opening design branches overseas.
“We plan to open an office on the west coast of America in 2018 and Asia the year after, allowing us to hand projects from one office to the next as part of a 24-hour operation,” he said.
“We will essentially be able to deliver three days’ work in one working day.”
Buffalo 7 seeks to help people and companies wow audiences with engaging, interactive presentations on the Microsoft platform.
It works with a wide range of clients from start-ups looking for investment to internal marketing teams and speakers at exhibitions and conferences. Corporate clients include Dell, Budweiser Budvar, Metro Newspapers and Red Bull.
Nicholson, 44, joined the company in 2014 as client services director and at the start of this year became CEO.
“We take you well beyond bullet points and use data visualisation, custom graphics and illustration, as well as impactful – and balanced – animation techniques to ensure every slide is visually arresting and conveys your message in a format your audience immediately understands,” he continued.
“Just because you’re using PowerPoint it doesn’t mean it has to look like or behave the way you’d expect it to: every time we go into a meeting and show people what it can do, it blows their mind!”
The company, which was founded as a full service design agency by creative director Richard Barnes in 2009, currently employs 31 people and has just signed a lease on a new city centre HQ in Manchester which it hopes to take occupancy of in late summer.
“Richard wanted to make a break away from life in a big agency to focus on projects that were driven by creativity and effectiveness rather than crazy deadlines,” added Nicholson.
“In the early days of Buffalo 7, Richard was based in London. When I came on board we decided that we would open a Manchester office and grow the team in this location.
“Being based in Manchester allows us access to a growing pool of talent and lower people and property costs which in turn makes us more cost effective.”
So how does Nicholson see presentations evolving with the rapid march of technology?
“They could be unrecognisable to those we see today,” he said.
“The technologies that could have the biggest impact on how we present are virtual reality and augmented reality.
“VR will enable the audience to be transported into the presentation itself while AR will allow digital presentation content to be overlaid onto the real world.”