Smedvig Capital leads £5M investment in Quill
Smedvig Capital are delighted to announceour £5m investment in global content creators Quill, to accelerate Quill’s growth in the rapidly emerging content marketing space.
The investmentwill allow Quill, which provides businesses with high quality content on a wide range of topics in any language, to consolidate its position as the UK’s content marketing leader and to advance the roll-out of its proprietary SaaS Platform. The platform manages a unique and rapidly expanding global network of over 2,000 specialist content creators, including writers, editors, graphic designers, photographers and video producers who span 53 languages and 17 countries.
With more than 25 per cent of Quill’s revenues already generated from overseas markets, the funding will further accelerate the company’s international growth ambitions, as it expands its service presence into China, Germany and the US.
About Quill
Quill seeks to help businesses better reach, acquire and retain their customers through bespoke digital content. The company sees content – whether in the form of words, images, graphics or video – becoming a more cost-effective alternative to traditional paid-for advertising, as brands seek to differentiate themselves in the increasingly competitive and fragmented digital marketplace and to improve their return on online marketing investment.
The development of the Quill Platform, which monitors the quality of all content produced, uniquely enables Quill to deliver multi-language content of consistent quality at scale, more effectively than is possible in-house or via traditional agency models. The SaaS version of the Platform is designed to help brands build their own publishing capabilities, as content and commerce on the web converge at an accelerating pace.
Quill’s current clientsinclude major advertising groups WPP, Aegis and Publicis; and brands including Shop Direct Group, LA fitness, STA Travel, Reckitt Benckiser and 888.com.
Founder and CEO, Ed Bussey is a three time online entrepreneur whose previous experience includes COO with mobile social networking pioneer ZYB, which was acquired by Vodafone PLC, and CMO at internet fashion retailer figleaves.com, acquired by N Brown PLC, where Bussey built a 1 million+ customer base across 66 countries.
Smedvig joins a strong group of established digital investors including Ariadne Capital Entrepreneurs Fund, Spotify’s Shakil Khan, and Toptable founder Karen Hanton. Smedvig will sit on the board alongside Julie Meyer of Ariadne. Dan’l Hewitt, formerly of Demand Media and Vice Media also joins the investor roster.
Ed Bussey, founder of Quill, commented, “We are delighted to have the backing of Smedvig. Their investment represents a significant vote of confidence in Quill’s business model as well as the wider and fast emerging opportunity in content marketing. Their capital and expertise will allow us to invest significantly in the expansion of our operations, platform technology and talent.”
Jordan Mayo, a Managing Director at Smedvig Capital commented, “We have been impressed by the exceptional quality of content created by Quill’s in house editorial team and global writer network, and the flexibility and scalability that Quill’s technology platform offers its clients in delivering this content globally; on any topic, in any format and in any language. Ed leads a strong and highly experienced team and as an active media and technology investor we look forward to working closely with them during this next phase of growth.”
