Having built a successful online business for a major publisher when the web was only just beginning to take shape, Dom left salaried life in 1998 to start up an agency with two colleagues. The resulting agency, MADnet, developed online strategies and websites for clients predominantly in entertainment such as Björk, Mother Records, Acid Jazz, and Audioweb.
Dom, however, wanted to go solo and in 2001, with several clients, started another agency called DJM. The business quickly took off and, when a major piece of business with Panasonic was won in 2002, Dom started to recruit heavily. The team went from 5 people in a basement office to a “proper” office with 15 staff in a year. The next 3 years saw steady organic growth.
From 2006, DJM repositioned as a full service digital agency providing multichannel strategy and execution to clients predominantly in the healthcare industry, although several FMCG and retail clients, such as Ted Baker and Panasonic were serviced by sister agency, Plastic. Dom wholly owned DJM and had a majority stake in Plastic.
Central to DJM was the mantra of ‘write once, publish many’. One of the key benefits of digital is the ability to edit/repurpose content quickly and efficiently for multiple channels enabling clients to disseminate brand messages to as many as possible whilst retaining brand consistency.
Whilst much of the content was already produced in-house, Dom decided to acquire a large disused warehouse in South West London and renovate the space into a state of the art filming and content production space. The result was The Studios which opened in 2010.
