Elmwood in interface with Internet provider

Leeds design group Elmwood has kickstarted a drive into the new media market by setting up a joint initiative with Internet service provider Planet On-line. The deal aims to provide fully integrated Internet services to clients.

Under the arrangement, Planet On-line supplies its production experience, with Elmwood offering design and strategic services. The two groups will market the offer jointly, under both company names, and each will bill the client direct for its input.

Elmwood is now looking for a project manager to help set up a separate new media division when the Planet relationship “has bedded down in around a year”, says Elmwood group marketing director Paul Middlebrook.

Middlebrook says Elmwood has worked on a handful of multimedia projects over the past two years but does not have any specialist Web designers. “However, multimedia currently only accounts for around 5 per cent of our income and over the next year or so we would look to develop it considerably… We would like to see at least ten people in the new media division in around two years time,” he says. He adds that the move comes as increasing numbers of clients demand integrated communications solutions, with a multimedia component.

No money has changed hands in the deal and the two management structures will remain separate. Middlebrook says the relationship may become more formal in the future.

The two groups recently completed a website for Yorkshire Water, as a pilot project to test the relationship, which officially went live last week.

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