Words: Louise Thacker
Photography: Roland Lane
Brought up in a family of business-minded bistro owners and fudge-makers, it’s clear that entrepreneurship has always run through the blood of this 27-year-old MD.
It’s a cold, dark Sunday afternoon ‘up north’ in Leeds. I step into a quiet bar on the usually busy Call Lane, eagerly early for my coffee-date with the winner of the 4Talent Innovation award. I call him, and within seconds of putting down the phone, I’m face to face with the man himself.
Attempting to ignore the fact that a Wham! record is playing rather too loudly in the background, I listen intently to how Phil’s inspiring games company first came about. “It was after I’d finished university in 2004,” he begins. “It seemed like a pretty good time to have a go at a bit of a dream of mine, which was making games. A few of us got together and started Creative North, and it developed some momentum from there.”
Based in Huddersfield, Creative North started off exclusively making mobile phone games, but since branched into Nintendo DS and iPhone – an impressive achievement in a field dominated by big players. “Our expertise is really in handheld gaming. If it’s portable and you can play a game on it, the chances are we’ve developed something for it.”
Creative North’s international folio of clients includes O2 and Hasbro, but they have firm roots in the Yorkshire creative community, running an on-the-job Academy scheme for local students with their eye on the gaming industry. “We take maybe three or four students a year, and bring them in to work on a part-time basis alongside our full-time team,” he explains.
As we near the bottom of our coffee cups the topic changes to family life, and it’s clear that Phil’s close-knit family share his enthusiasm for enterprise. “My youngest sister runs a restaurant in Newcastle; my other sister was a snowboard instructor, and then started up a bistro – and then there’s my youngest brother, who makes and sells fudge at a local farmers market. It’s his little money-making scheme while he’s at college.”
True innovators always approach conventional tasks in unexpected ways, and this 27-year-old entrepreneur recalls one client that approached them for an electronic alternative to a bag of leaflets and guides at a New York event. “We devised a way to put all the information onto a Nintendo DS,” he smiles. And who would have thought of that?
