Lucy Reid
Co-founder & Technical Solutions Director
I learned to code back in 2015 as part of my Computer Science master’s degree programme at the University of East Anglia. As a Creative Writing graduate, the whole course came as a major shock to the system. There was a lot more lab work and a lot less talking about our feelings. There were also a lot more job opportunities after I finished.
My first tech job was as a front-end developer for a company called Nielsen Brandbank. I was, as it turns out, not very good at it - but my people skills and ability to explain concepts to other people showed promise. It was at this point I discovered consulting. For two and a bit years, I helped major retailers including Walmart, Sainsbury’s, Ocado and Waitrose integrate with our software.
In 2018, I started working at We Make Websites. Tim was one of my interviewers and someone I would continue to work with closely throughout my time there. Together, we oversaw 50+ digital transformation projects for brands of various sizes: Jigsaw, Alessi, Toteme, Mills & Boon, The Bike Club and Dr Sam’s to name but a few.
Post-lockdown, I took a role at Bloomreach. Holding my own in rooms of C-suite, working alongside enterprise salespeople at the top of their game and landing huge names like Boohoo Group, Mayborn and Woolworths gave me the confidence to finally think about doing my own thing. So it was perfect timing when Tim reached out to me in January 2024 and asked if I was interested in - his words - ‘getting the band back together.’ Despite phrasing it this way, I said yes.
Enter Factory, something we’ve unknowingly been working towards for half a decade. We hope you like it.
Tim Richardson
Co-founder & Commercial Director
My career path has been anything but conventional. I started out in finance at Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and a VC backed start-up accelerator but realised that corporate life was not for me. So, in a fit of creative ambition (or stupidity?), I left finance to start a record label. I spent the next three years cutting my teeth on branding, marketing, eCommerce, distribution and partnerships. But alas, the business failed. So I became a consultant.
I took my corporate and SMB knowledge and spent the next five years applying it as a freelance strategic marketing consultant, working with companies like West Cork Music, Britvic Ireland, and Trinity College Dublin. However, I was destined for agency-land.
In 2016 I joined Shopify Plus agency, We Make Websites, as their first commercial lead. Over the next five and a half years, as Head of Growth then Commercial Director, my focus powered us from £1m to £6.5m and one of the biggest Shopify agencies in the world. Along the way, I advised brands like Pangaia, Toteme, Jigsaw, Toast, Hasbro, This Works, David Beckham and Alessi. After we sold the business in 2021, I cashed my shares and turned my podcast, Your Basket Is Empty (started in 2018), into a solo consulting company that focussed on eCommerce Tech GTM and agency exit strategy. But the thought of starting an agency was always in the back of my mind.
In 2023, I reconnected with Lucy at an industry event. We spent hours discussing the flaws of the traditional agency model and realised we shared a vision for something different—an agency designed not to scale. And with that, Factory was born.