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Today, WIRO turns 10, which feels really strange... Not because it’s untrue, but because when I started this business, I wasn’t really thinking in decades. I was thinking about the next invoice, the next client, the next project and next opportunity to do better work than last time and build a solid roster of clients and great case studies to show off our best work and biggest brands.
Ten years later, here we are!
Here’s a reflection as we look back on where we started, what went wrong, what went right, and what ten years of building an agency the hard way has taught me.
If you’re building an agency or a personal brand of your own, I hope parts of this resonate with you.
Where We Started (vs. How It’s Going)
WIRO didn’t start as WIRO.
It started as TR Design & Print, in a 114 sq ft office in Ipswich. That wasn’t a quirky origin story, it was just what I could afford at the time. I was doing everything: design, print, client meetings, networking events, admin, delivery and posting client print. If something broke, I fixed it. If a client needed reassurance, I gave it. Regularly working during holidays and late into the nights and weekends, having zero-to-no social life. I sacrificed a lot, personally – in the hope business would take off and I could later reap the rewards.
As the business grew, we moved offices. Then moved again. And again. Each move felt like progress, with more space, more people, more ambition.
Eventually, we landed in what felt like the dream. A 2,000 sq. ft barn conversion in the idyllic Suffolk countryside, building an in-house team of over 15. Black clad, open plan and in the middle of no where, with banter and the Sonos pumping. And from the outside, it probably was.
However, someone ate a bat over in China, and later COVID hit.
Going Backwards to Go Forwards
When COVID forced us to work from home, it also forced something else: honesty.
We’d grown fast. Too fast.
We had hired people, but they weren’t always working in the same way. Individuals were doing good work, but without consistent training, shared standards or unified processes.
The impact was felt on both sides. Internally, it created inconsistency, pressure and dependency on individuals rather than systems. Externally, it meant variable delivery experiences for clients not because of a lack of care, but because we hadn’t yet built a single, scalable way of working.
It became clear that if WIRO was going to grow properly, we couldn’t rely on talent alone. We needed structure that supported the team and protected the client experience.
So we did the hardest thing a growing agency can do, we reigned it in. Which is extremely hard as a founder, to be told “no we can take more on right now”, when its your sole responsibility to keep the work and pennies coming in, but ultimately any more could have ended in a car crash.
So we made the decision to downsize. We stripped things back to its core. We accepted that growth without foundations isn’t growth at all - it’s just pressure waiting to crack.
We gave up our beautiful offices, and went fully remote. A commercial saving, but also a power-play we later found out.
That period changed WIRO forever.
It forced us to:
- Build proper SOP’s
- Introduce middle management, structure and a Senior Leadership Team (SLT)
- Invest in processes, tools, automations and documenting… everything!
- Design a business that could scale without burning people out, so we could later turn on our Sales tap!
It felt like going backwards at the time. In reality, it was the most important move we ever made. It was setting ourselves up for future success, true scaling and long-term sustainable growth.
The Principles That Now Guide Everything We Do
10 years in, you stop chasing shiny ideas and start committing to what actually works.
Our mission, vision and values didn’t come from a workshop or two. They came from experience from getting things wrong, fixing them, and doing it better the next time. Regularly running both project retrospects (Retro’s) as well as an agency-wide ‘Sailboat’ Retro workshop every Friday, without fail: to run through Wind (what got us there), Anchors (what held us back) and the Island (to stay aligned on where we’re going).
Our Mission
Our mission is simple:
“To deliver best-in-class Shopify Plus experiences designed to scale, optimised for conversion, and built on evidence, not opinion.”
That line exists because we’ve seen what happens when:
- Process is ignored
- Design is subjective
- Performance is treated as an afterthought
We don’t just build pretty looking Shopify stores. We challenge assumptions, lead on technical and CX decisions, and push for evidence-backed solutions that drive real commercial outcomes.
We build data-led, conversion-focused and scalable solutions that work in the real world. We reference the leading UX and accessibility best practices. That belief shapes how every team at WIRO operates from strategy and UX, through to development and ongoing optimisation.
Our Vision
Our vision is to become “the go to name, in the eCom game”
Not the biggest agency. Not the loudest.
But the one brands trust when the stakes are high migrations, scale, international growth, CRO and performance.
That vision is why we:
- Narrowed our focus to Shopify Plus
- Invested heavily in our internal systems like CORE and our Theme Assessment Tool
- Built a Senior Leadership Team and specialist team of experts
- Shifted from one-off projects, to long-term growth partnerships
Our Values (Earned, Not Written)
Our values are lived every day especially when things get hard. They were earned over time through growth, mistakes, resets and hard decisions.
They guide how we hire, how we lead, how we work with clients, and how we treat each other especially when things get difficult.
They are:
- Trust: autonomy over micromanagement
- Transparency: no hidden agendas, internally or externally
- Data-led thinking: evidence over gut feel or opinion
- Process-first delivery: consistency protects quality
- People first - because sustainable teams do better work
What you see at WIRO is what you get.
We don’t sell one thing and operate another.
And we don’t need to convince people of our culture, they experience it.
Why This Matters After 10 Years
Looking back, everything WIRO has become : the CORE framework, the way we audit, how we deliver, how we scale ties back to this.
The mission keeps us focused. The vision keeps us ambitious. The values keep us honest.
They’re what turned a small studio into a Shopify Premier Partner, a global team, and an agency trusted by some of the biggest brands in eCommerce.
And they’re what will guide the next 10 years.
The WIRO Journey: 10 Years, Phase by Phase
WIRO didn’t grow year by year, it grew in phases. Each one taught us something we couldn’t have learned any other way.
2017: TR Design & Print (The Foundations)
This was the apprenticeship.
- Solo founder
- Brand identity, print and early websites
- Local B2B clients
- £500 average project value
This phase taught me how to win work, deliver under pressure, and take responsibility for outcomes. There was nowhere to hide and that was a good thing.
2019: Becoming WIRO (The Pivot)
This was the moment of intent.
- Rebranded to WIRO
- Shifted from a small one man band studio to an agency
- Freelance-led delivery
- First serious Shopify and WordPress builds
We hadn’t niched yet, but we knew we wanted bigger challenges and bigger responsibility.
2022: WIRO 1.0 (Fast Growth, Fragile Foundations)
This was growth we’d never experienced.
- Rapid hiring during lockdowns, with no real job titles or job descriptions, no KPI’s or source of truth.
- 17-person team which in truth was way to big for the amount of work we had in at the time and it cost us dearly.
- Inconsistent standards and processes. Reflecting back we had no structure and despite still being profitable, it killed our profit for for a couple of years.
- Culture started to strain with some under-performing and others over-performing. However, we’d later find out that this was a blessing in disguise. A-players floated to the top as we built out our SLT and management, and C-players phased out of the business.
We were busy, but not mature. This phase exposed every weakness we’d ignored.
2023: WIRO 2.0 (The Reset)
This was the turning point.
- Moved to a remote-first agency, hiring better talent further a field with a really solid agency foundation built on processes, tools and systems, ready to scale.
- Smaller, but much stronger team capable of delivering time and time again.
- Clear direction and focus.
This was the year WIRO really grew up. We stopped chasing growth and started designing for sustainability.
2024: WIRO 3.0 (Focus & Maturity)
This is where we really wanted to be, and where we’d dreamt of being for years, but had a very long and hard journey of establishing everything we have done, in order to get here.
- Introduced a Senior Leadership Team and middle management.
- Premium repositioning and rebranding to demonstrate the value we can provide to brands.
- Greater focus on our brand and marketing, hosting dinners and events.
- Average project values £40k+
Focus changed everything: the quality of our clients, our confidence and ability to close sales and our brand positioning.
2024–2025: WIRO Today (Scaling with Intent)
This is WIRO, as it stands today.
- 26 person global team, spread over 6 countries.
- £50k–£80k average project size, with 6 figure retainers and projects.
- Growth, CRO and migration-led engagements. With a real focus on conversion and revenue KPI’s.
- Shopify Premier Partners (1 of 12 in the UK and placing us in the top 1% globally), something we’re really proud of after being made Shopify Plus partners (1 of 32 in the UK back in 2023).
We now scale deliberately, not reactively. We’re set up for long term and sustainable growth and success.
From Principles to Systems: CORE
One of the biggest lessons of the last decade? Consistency beats creativity when it comes to scaling the biggest and best brands on Shopify.
That’s why we built our CORE Theme Framework, a performance-led Shopify foundation every WIRO project starts from.
CORE isn’t a theme. It’s a system:
- Shopify best practices (UX and technical) baked in.
- Speed and performance by default.
- Modular, flexible design sections.
- Supported by a CORE Design System and Figma styleguide
It protects quality, speed and outcomes, no matter the size of the project. It guarantees success, reduces operation and technical risk to brands tenfold.
Turning Experience into Products
As we matured, we stopped selling opinions and started building frameworks.
Today, WIRO offers:
- CX & Technical Audits
- CRO Audits, Retainers & A/B testing
- Growth Roadmaps & Retainers
- Shopify Builds and Migrations to Shopify from Legacy CMS Platforms.
Our audits aren’t slide decks for show they’re decision-making tools that help brands prioritise what actually moves the needle. The take all the learnings and findings from our Audits, compile it into a Growth Roadmap prioritised based on Effort & Impact (using RICE scores). Naturally, low effort but high impact (quick wins) float to the top, but priorities we recommend are all aligned to your wider and longer term commercials goals and objectives.
What We’ve Built & Achieved, So Far…
Over the last decade, WIRO has grown into something I’m incredibly proud of:
- 500+ eCommerce brands supported. Having worked with some of the hottest brands such as *Goodwood, Sisters & Seekers, Bloom & Wild, Kick Game, Baudoin & Lange, Wright Bros, Le Col, Wattbike, Piglet in Bed, Alpkit, Dropdead (Bring Me The Horizon's lead singer Oli Sykes), Dutch Barn (Ricky Gervais Vodka brand), WatchHouse, Duke + Dexter, Brother & Kin, Healf, Mallet London (Tommy Mallet from The Only Way Is Essex), Doughnut Time and Casablanca.*
- Became award-winning industry leaders with over 40+ awards, across UK Agency Awards, UK Dev Awards, UK eCommerce Awards, European eCommerce Awards, European Agency Awards, Company Culture Awards, Small Business Awards. Winning Awards such as Best Company Culture, CRO Agency of The Year, Small eCommerce Agency of The Year, Medium eCommerce Agency of The Year, Best Site Migration, and multiple Honourable Mentions on Awwwards.
- Becoming a house hold name in eCommerce
- Competing with some of the largest agencies in the game. We rebranded and repositioned to mirror our premium offering, we’re now competing with some of the biggest agencies in the space that we were looking up to 5 years ago.
- 7-figure turnover, strong YoY growth and EBITDA. Profitable for 10 years running.
- Inbound enquiries from 9-figure brands
- Hosting industry events and intimate dinners with leading tech partners such as Gorgias, Swap and Shopify.
- Annual retreats and visiting our global team
- Personally invited by Shopify, to their Shopify.dev Event in Toronto, Canada in 2025 🇨🇦
- Spent the last 2-3 years building out our service offering including A/B Testing, CRO Retainers, Growth Retainers, Builds, Migrations, Audits and Discoveries.
In 2023, we became Shopify Plus Partners.
In 2025, we became Shopify Premier Partners placing WIRO in the top 1% of Shopify agencies globally Shopify Plus 🌏
This shows a decade of learning, failing, refining and committing to higher standards.
10 Lessons from 10 Years
If I had to distil a decade into a few hard truths:
- Growth without process, is absolute and utter chaos. It felt exciting at the time, but it created so many headaches further down the line, that took years to unravel.
- Culture doesn’t happen by accident, and bad apples should be removed.
- Saying no is a growth strategy. Over the years, we’ve said yes to many, many things we should have declined and said no to. Sometimes, it feels good to say no.
- Systems protect your team and your clients too!
- Remote work only fails without trust
- Niche, niche and niche! Best thing we ever did.
- Bad hires hurt more than slow growth, remove these quickly!
- Founders: remove yourself early, allow others to thrive. One of the best things I did, was get out of the way and allow experts to do what they do well.
- Reputation compounds
- Playing the long game, always wins
Our Story So Far…
WIRO at 10 isn’t the end of a journey it’s the foundation for the next decade.
We’ve gone from a tiny office in Ipswich to working with some of the biggest brands in eCommerce. From design and print to Shopify Premier Partners and from freelancers to an employed global team. From chaos to complete clarity.
And we’re only just getting started.
To our clients, partners, and the WIRO team past and present, thank you for being part of the story.
The Next Decade
The first 10 years of WIRO were about learning, breaking and rebuilding.
The next decade is about scale, deeper partnerships, deeper expertise, and deeper impact. Continuing to refine how we help ambitious brands scale on Shopify and Shopify Plus, without losing what matters most: quality, people and importantly trust.
We’re not here to be the biggest agency. We’re here to be the one brands rely on when it matters most.
Here’s to the next 10 years of WIRO!
