Novos
London
Website: Novos
Founders: Antonio Wedral & Sam Hurley
Year founded: 2018
UK headcount: <50
Offices: London
We’ve still got a bit of a startup mindset but equally we’ve matured as an agency.
Profile
Novos has had quite a journey since it began life as a side hustle under the name ‘statement.digital’ back in 2018. Co-founders Antonio Wedral and Sam Hurley were working in other in-house roles at the time and felt there was a lack of agencies specifically focused on SEO organic services for ecommerce retail brands, which were spending a lot of money on paid media.
Sam and Antonio’s efforts to build a full-service SEO agency saw Novos grow at around 100% year on year in its first few years, becoming a million-pound agency by 2021. Today, the agency has 40 employees working with leading ecommerce brands in the UK and internationally, ranging from Adidas and Osprey to Vitabiotics and Beavertown.
After experiencing rapid growth through and beyond the pandemic, Sam and Antonio set about establishing an action plan for future growth. Not attracted by the typical merger and acquisition exit route, Novos became an employee-owned agency in 2022, with its founders selling the majority of their shares to an employee-ownership trust.
On the cusp of maturity, 2024 marked a new chapter for Novos, signalled by the launch of ‘Novos 2.0’. The new strategy is geared towards ensuring Novos keeps pace with the changing SEO landscape as it ramps up its efforts to become the first fully organic ecommerce agency. This has involved introducing new organic services to expand its client pool, including a CRM service and PR and SEO Relevancy Tool in 2025. It is already being used by clients including Confused.com and TALA.
Novos’ "meticulous” recruitment process has played another key role in growth to-date. It only wants the “best minds” in SEO (which Antonio admits is rarer to find these days) and to ensure clients have direct access to them. Rather than hiring account managers, the focus is on building better relationships and communication with clients.
In 2025 Novos achieved ‘Great Place to Work’ certification, which is based on employee feedback and independent analysis, and testament to the strong workplace culture Sam and Antonio have created.