Member Article

Record year for regional events company BeaconHouse

A LEADING regional events and conferencing company is celebrating record results after turnover increased by more than 50 per cent.

BeaconHouse Events expanded into Hoults Yard, Byker, from a city centre office last year. Since then, the company has added a further two new members of staff and year-on-year turnover has increased by 51 per cent.

The company was launched in 2014 by directors Sarah Thackray and Catherine Coulter, and delivers more than 100 events a year.

“Most of our business is in the north east, but we’re increasingly spreading our reach across the UK,” explained Sarah.

Events delivered include conferences, outdoor festivals, award ceremonies, product launches and charity dinners.

“We also specialise in membership services, which we deliver for regional IT network Dynamo North East,” added Sarah.

Originally from London, Sarah met Ballymena-born Catherine at a Tyneside-based events company after both had moved to the region to study – Sarah to Newcastle University where she completed a languages degree, and Catherine to the University of Sunderland where she studied media production and then an MSc in project management.

Sarah started her career as a relocation consultant at IBM before moving into events, where she met Catherine who was working as temporary event staff on one of the agency’s events, the NewcastleGateshead Art Fair.

BeaconHouse were the organisers of the recent Northern Powerhouse Business Summit, which was addressed by Bank of England Governor Mark Carney, and hosted at Newcastle’s Boiler Shop as part of the Great Exhibition of the North.

“It was satisfying to know that the organisers trusted us with such a prestigious and important event – it was a pleasure to work on and provided businesses with learning, commercial and networking opportunities,” said Sarah.

Other key clients include The Chronicle Sunshine Fund, InterContinental Hotels Group, the Great Run Company, Dentsu Aegis, True Potential, NGI, Opencast Software and space group.

“We’ve had a great year and enjoyed working with some wonderful clients on some inspirational events,” explained Catherine.

“But we’re still really ambitious and our target this year is to increase turnover past £500,000. To help us do so, we’ll be recruiting a further two members of the BeaconHouse team over the coming year,” she added.

“Our ambition is to become the ‘go-to company’ for events in the north east - before looking to expand outside of the region. We want to maintain our reputation for excellence and creativity and don’t want to lose that personal touch by becoming too large.

“Culture is important to us – we take recruitment very seriously and make sure we’re bringing in people with the right skills and attitude. We work hard and want everyone to enjoy being here, there’s never that feeling of dread on a Sunday night about returning to work,” said Sarah.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by BeaconHouse .