Toolbox Marketing turns 20!
Retail destination marketing agency, Toolbox Marketing, is celebrating its twenty year anniversary in style with a new logo, award win and reflection on it’s 20 years in the retail real estate industry.
Toolbox Marketing started in September 2000 and in that time has helped over 120 retail locations across the UK and Europe to flourish and exceed their business objectives. With more than 20 years’ expertise in engaging real estate users in the changing ways they live, work, shop and play, Michelle Buxton and the Toolbox Marketing team are leading experts, innovators and influencers in the retail real estate and placemaking arenas.
In direct contrast to its humble beginnings as a “two-woman-startup”, the marketing company now employs 13 staff members at its office in Bardwell, Suffolk, also in Belgium and Poland. Employing a team of top retail destination marketing and creative experts, Toolbox Marketing harnesses a complete spectrum of skill sets to provide insight-driven strategic and creative solutions to retail property and place marketing challenges.
Michelle Buxton, CEO, spent her early career in retail real estate in South Africa, then in shopping centre management in the UK 7 years before setting up Toolbox Marketing in the UK in 2000. Since then she has been providing visionary strategic insight and advice, innovative marketing services and leading technology solutions to real estate across Europe, and now the USA with PropTech platform Mallcomm.
Michelle says, “Our work ranges from the serious business of portfolio planning and brand repositioning – to the magic of creating emotionally engaging communications that make people want to shop, dine and play. Over recent years the retail sector has faced many challenges, including internet shopping, declining footfall, increasing costs and now the implications of COVID-19, all of which have had a huge effect on our high streets and towns. The retail line up looks very different now to how it did 20 years ago, with an increase in empty units and many shopping destinations in need of reinvention. Toolbox Marketing grew up in community centres and this depth of experience is what ensures our success in this challenging environment. We know and understand the importance of place within a community AND how to achieve this on limited resources. The Toolbox Marketing team has gone from strength to strength, over the past 20 years and now headed up by Chloe Keith, Group Head of Marketing, our continued success is guaranteed “
The company has recently been awarded Best Retail & Destination Marketing Specialists 2020 in the prestigious 2020 Southern Enterprise Awards proudly hosted by SME News! Another award to add to the mantelpiece.
The company’s new logo keeps the ‘Toolbox Pink’ that the industry recognises, whilst playing on the notion of the tools available within the company’s toolbox. It introduces a ‘nut’ that you would find in a toolbox to really prove that the team are the ‘nuts and bolts at what they do’!
In order to celebrate 20 years, the company is taking on various challenges for charity including 100 miles of activity for Suffolk Mind and a 300 mile bike ride for Cancer Research UK. The birthday party, featuring pink champagne, is on hold until later in the year.
