The original co-founders of digital marketing agency E3; Stuart Avery and Mike Bennett are celebrating this week after completing a management buy out.

The deal sees the duo become 100% shareholders and non executives Dougal Templeton and Scott Davidson exit the company.

The pair originally started the company whilst at university back in 1997 under the name of New Generation Productions and took on investment from Davidson and Templeton to help accelerate the growth of their business in 2000 at the height of the dot com boom.

The business went from 8 to 30 people in the space of just six weeks and saw the agency win Orange.com; the telecommunication giant’s global web site.

Stuart Avery, MD said:

“When Scott and Dougal invested back in 2000 they were heavily involved with the development of the company, but over the last 5 – 6 years have left us to get on running the business so we’ve been keen for some time to take full ownership”.

He continued:

“This is a hugely exciting step for us and we think a really positive new era for E3. It’s been an up and down journey, but we’ve managed to grow and strengthen the business every year so this marks an exciting new chapter for us personally and for the whole E3 team.”

“We’ll be inviting some of our senior management team to join us on the board to help drive the company forward and we’re also on the hunt for some non executives to sit around the table with us.”

Stuart said:

“For our clients and employees I guess it will just be business as usual.”