Wolfestone Translation

Origins

Wolfestone Translation was envisaged by the two Directors (Roy Allkin and Anna Bastek) who had always been entrepreneurial in outlook and had wanted to start their own company. When they met and got to know each other, they found that their backgrounds and experience neatly dovetailed. Roy’s experience in business development and the voluntary sector lead him to notice the lack of professional translation companies in Wales and combining this with Anna’s excellent language skills (English, Polish and German) and marketing expertise seemed a natural development. Initially, many months were spent researching the translation industry thoroughly and developing a strategic entry into the industry. Both soon noticed that there was a gap in the market for a company offering big agency quality for small agency prices and service i.e. both were adamant that quality, value and exceptional customer service were paramount if Wolfestone was to make swift inroads into the market.

Success Factor

The three main factors that have contributed to the growth of Wolfestone Translation have been the investment in technology, marketing and staff. Wolfestone has introduced its bespoke Total Translation Technology – Synergy X – solution which enables us to attract and deliver massive contracts. Synergy X delivers a complete range of tools for the translator, reviser, reviewer, project manager and client via the web. Synergy X is web based and accessible from any internet browser worldwide, enabling the company to leverage the best linguistic talent from around the planet and take advantage of global time-zones to decrease project timescales. Marketing - when the global economic downturn hit the country many companies decided to tighten their belts, Wolfestone bucked the trend and invested heavily in marketing the company aggressively online. This had massive benefits and allowed the company to obtain market share from competitors. Finally, the company has invested in continuous professional development for staff and as an Investors in People company, the founders feel that Wolfestone’s staff is key to the company’s growth - over the last year, over £100,000 has been invested in staff development and training.

The Future

Wolfestone will be a truly global enterprise. Translation and language services are required planet wide and Wolfestone has an ideal mix of global resource and local service. The company has worked incredibly hard to develop a worldwide network of translators, which now numbers over 6000 fully vetted, qualified, experienced, language professionals. Communication with staff is an integral component in achieving the company vision. Wolfestone want the staff to buy into the vision, feel ownership of it and actively strive to help the vision become reality. Development on its international offices is well underway and essentially these offices will act as sales centres with dedicated staff focused on sales and marketing in addition to a network of sales agents. Project management of sales generated is dealt with from the UK headquarters and the company has invested in its Total Translation Technology – Synergy X – to enable this expansion. Offices have been or are being set up in South East Asia, the Middle East, Russia, Central Europe and the USA. These offices give Wolfestone a presence in each of the major translation markets worldwide and a strong platform from which to develop the company on a truly worldwide scale. Its 3-year strategy also includes systemising the business so it will run itself without the shareholders’ involvement. The founders want to empower managers to drive the business forward and make business decisions. In addition to the renewable energy sector (which is targeted through the EcoTrans brand) and the oil/gas/energy sector (which is targeted through the NRG Trans brand) Wolfestone are also developing specialist brands in other vertical markets.