Member Article

Mira takes aim at further expansion

A FORMER footballer is taking aim at new goals after investment from one of the region’s most respected entrepreneurs.

Stuart Bramley, 28, played semi-professional football for Blyth Spartans and Whitley Bay after completing a football scholarship and business management degree at Lyon College in America.

In 2018 he launched MIRA Marketing, a digital marketing and advertising agency and now with the help of north east entrepreneur and investor Neil Stephenson, has opened an office and recruited his first member of staff.

“I’ve known Neil for a number of years having met him through my previous business, Unique Physique Clothing, which I founded in 2015. He made a couple of introductions then and we kept in touch. I discussed my ideas for MIRA Marketing with him and I’m delighted he’s chosen to invest in the business and given me the benefit of his vast experience,” said Stuart.

MIRA, which is Italian for ‘taking aim’ is already working with brands around the world, including Scalextric, Hornby Hobbies, US fitness-wear companies and a luxury dog food company.

“I created a website and did all the digital marketing and advertising for Unique Physique and learnt a great deal, and have kept on learning. We use statistics, analysis and our years of experience to deliver strategic digital marketing solutions, working with Facebook and Google Pay Per Click,” explained Stuart, who is originally from Wallsend.

Adam Hunter, a childhood friend, has joined the company at its Hoults Yard offices as Digital Marketing Manager.

“Adam has bags of great business experience and will concentrate on client relations and reporting. We chose Hoults Yard because of the buzz and because it’s full of creative, ambitious tech businesses like ourselves,” said Stuart.

After studying at Burnside College in Wallsend and then Newcastle College, Stuart was headhunted to join Lyon College in Arkansas on a four-year football scholarship, which incorporated a business degree.

While in America, Stuart worked in his college gym and was surprised to see how badly people dressed to workout and recognised a potential gap in the market for functional but fashionable fitness wear. On his return to the UK he decided to give up his dream of a career in football and, using his business degree experience, launched his Unique Physique clothing brand online.

Orders came from around the world and the company became Boxing Scotland’s official kit partner.

Using the skills he’d honed at Unique Physique, Stuart then launched MIRA Marketing.

“Again, I created my own website and branding, and was fortunate enough to have some great clients from day one. Thanks to what I’d been doing at Unique Physique, I was known within the digital media sector and know the digital marketing business inside out.

“We create bespoke media campaigns for our clients, constantly monitoring, tweaking and scaling the campaigns in response to the data. We offer a very personal service, not an off-the-shelf solution, and we get to know our clients very well,” he said.

“We also provide web development services, partly because it’s so vital for a company’s landing page to be right. If it’s not, we’ll be honest with the client, tell them it needs changing and make the adjustments to get it right.

“We’re on target to hit our turnover target of £250,000 for this year and we have plans to grow in terms of clients, employees and turnover very quickly – Neil would like our headcount to be up to ten within a matter of months,” Stuart added.

Neil is well known and respected in the North East business community, actively investing in the tech sector and holding several board positions.

He was Chief Executive at tech company Onyx for ten years. In early 2016 the business was acquired by one of its competitors in a deal valued at £65m. Neil left at that point to found his own business, Stephenson Ventures.

Since then, he has been involved with other businesses, using his expertise in finance, acquisitions, sales and marketing to help them scale up.

Neil said: “E-commerce represents the biggest market opportunity I have seen for a decade to quickly build a business with scale, and in MIRA I see a platform from which we can really grow. Working with existing online brands to help them grow faster or offline brands needing to pivot in the post pandemic era, the future looks bright.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Hoults Yard .