Table of Contents
- What EO is
- Why we became EO
- Our journey to becoming EO
- What it means for our clients & team
- The founders
Employee ownership sometimes called the "John Lewis model" — is a government-backed structure that puts businesses in the hands of the people who run them.
At NOVOS, this means that:
Sam and Antonio, the business’s founders, have sold 90% of their shares to an ‘employee trust’, which is a legal representation of the employees set up as a separate entity on Companies House
The role of the Trust is to represent what the employees want and need, giving them a voice in how the company is run
We launched a People Committee responsible for collecting feedback, ideas, and issues across each part for the company and feeding that into the Trust
Sam and Antonio still run the day to day business alongside the leadership and management teams, however, any large decisions that will directly impact profits need to be voted for by the Trust (.e.g new markets or services, very senior hires).
This isn't an EMI scheme, it's structurally different, and is treated as a genuine business sale to a separate company: in our case, the Employee Ownership Trust (EOT).
How Does This Differ From A Normal Sale?
We believe EO is a far more rewarding route than a traditional merger or acquisition.
We can name plenty of brilliant agencies that no longer exist because a buyer absorbed the brand once the founders left. We've honestly never heard a positive story about an agency acquired by another — and the worst we've heard come from people who lived through it: everything they built, pulled out from under them.
Here's how we see EO versus the traditional acquisition route:
Traditional | EO | |
|---|---|---|
Targets | Inflated so they're never hit | Set and owned by us |
Motivation | Eroded by impossible targets | Higher as everyone has a stake |
Earn out | Founders grind to "earn out" their own company | Founders stay and are rewarded |
Founders | Leave after 2-3 years | Founders stay for 10+ years |
Team | Leave inline with founders or sooner | Stay for much longer |
Staff benefits | None | Ownership, voice and profit share |
Business longevity | Short 5-8 years | Built to last |
Culture | Diluted or lost | Protected and evolved |
Client benefits | None | A more motivated team and stable, improving service |
Why We Became EO
There are 3 core reasons why we embraced the EO route vs. a traditional sale to a larger company:
- Values. Plenty of agencies say "people first." We went further and built a genuinely people-led agency, run by the people who built it.
- Everyone gets rewarded. A traditional sale only rewards founders and a handful of shareholders, it's the team that is left to absorb into a bigger company and a different culture. EO shares the upside with everyone.
- Longevity. So many great independent agencies vanish after being absorbed. EO means NOVOS can outlast that pattern, with Sam and Antonio continuing to drive its growth.
Our Journey To Becoming EO
2018
Sam and Antonio launched statement.digital whilst both employed at their in-house roles.
2019
Their first full year on the agency together: a rebrand, a move into a co-working space, and their first hires.
2021
Two years after our first hires, we passed the million-pound mark.
2022
We became employee-owned after scaling past 30 people and doubling revenue in a single year!
2023
100% year-on-year growth since launch, with our people-led mindset intact.
2024
A successful year that prompted a bigger question: what does the next decade of NOVOS look like? The start of a new strategy.
2025
We began the shift from SEO agency to a more strategic agency, integrating AI across our services & planning for the new era of search.
2026
The new chapter goes live: our "Be the answer" rebrand and full repositioning as an eCommerce discovery agency, recognised at the National Digital Awards for Best eCommerce Agency and Best Digital PR Agency.
What It Means For Our Clients
Our team has always gone the distance for clients who share our values and EO takes that further. Because our people benefit directly from client retention, account growth and campaign performance, they're genuinely invested in keeping the brands we work with happy.
Retention is a chronic problem in the agency world. EO has helped us hold on to senior talent and keep a stable team structure, which means:
- A team that's more invested and more motivated to stay ahead of every competitor.
- No external sale, no acquisition: none of the upheaval you see across the industry, and none you'll ever experience with us.
- More skin in the game. Our people are owners, not employees clocking in, so they go further for the business and for you.
What It Means For Our Team
We're proud of how generous our benefits are. Unlimited annual leave is one of our best-known perks and only possible because we trust each other to show up for the team.
We also run a peer-to-peer rewards system where the team earn monthly credits to recognise teammates, redeemable against everything from vouchers for leading eCommerce brands to experience days and the ever-popular Deliveroo order.
Beyond the financial side, our team has a real voice in company direction through the People Committee, which feeds ideas and issues into the Trust.
The Founders
EO is built to incentivise founders for the long term, protecting the long-term health of the business.
For our first three years we chased sales targets like any other agency. But becoming the first SEO EOT shifted our mindset: best-in-class work, the right clients and team, sustainable profit over a 10-year-plus horizon.
“We created NOVOS to be truly different from other agencies in the industry, and becoming an EO company enhanced this vision. The next phase is to share over 50% of profits with staff - something we can only achieve by working with brands that share our values.
We’re both confident that the people who helped build this agency are the right people to lead it into the next level of growth.”
Sam & Antonio
