THE first company to specialise in helping businesses win awards has marked three milestones at once.

Boost Marketing celebrated its 10th anniversary at the same time it passed £1million in turnover and was setting up an operation in New York.

The company, based in Bournemouth and Brighton, has so far notched up 900 award wins for its clients and aims to reach 1,000 in the coming year.

The news that its turnover had passed £1m came through on the same day it held a 10-year party at the Cosy Club in Bournemouth.

Director Echo Ilott said the turnover target had been its aim for the financial year ending in April.

“We had the accountants number-crunching that afternoon and we just surpassed it,” she said.

The company, which already operates in France and the United Arab Emirates, has been setting up an American operation.

One member of staff there, supported by the teams in the UK, will aim to tap into the big awards market in the US.

“It’s a huge industry in America. They’re probably bigger on awards than we are,” said Ms Ilott.

“We’ve searched and we can’t find another company doing what we do.”

The company has seen the awards become ever more sophisticated, with many submissions now involving presentations and video.

“For any one award entry, we might have 12 different people working on it,” said she added.

The company boasts a 40 per cent “win rate” for its clients, compared with 5-10 per for other award entrants. It emphasises the need to tell compelling stories backed up with robust evidence.

The business was started in 2006 by managing director Chris Robinson, who worked in marketing and was increasingly being asked to write awards submissions.

“He started it in his shed, I joined 10 months later from my living room,” said Ms Ilott.

The company has six staff in Bournemouth and seven in Brighton, as well as six home workers and one member of staff in Ireland.

“I don’t think any of us realised just how busy it would become. We always knew it would be popular, we always knew the businesses was going to do well.

“We knew that it was going that way but £1m is that landmark figure.”