A business built on independence

We Create Digital was founded in 2011 by Anna’s husband, straight out of university, with the drive to build something of his own from the ground up.

Anna joined in 2017, bringing a different background — a degree in politics and sociology and a career in public affairs around Westminster — until having her first child changed her priorities. “Everything changed because number one priority became flexibility, and that just wasn’t really an option at my old agency,” she says. “I went back on my third day after maternity leave and handed in my resignation.”

She joined her husband’s growing business to help with admin and finance, at a company with just one other team member. From there, the pair grew it steadily, with COVID accelerating things considerably as demand grew for the online presence We Create Digital specialised in.

Today, We Create Digital is a hybrid team of nine, mostly working from its Coggeshall base two days a week — a model built deliberately around the flexibility Anna wished she’d had earlier in her career. “We’re not the kind of agency who wants to be big,” she says. “We want to stay really local.”

Broad expertise, with a genuine local footprint

We Create Digital works across website design, development, SEO, UX and CRO, deliberately avoiding narrow sector specialisation. “Our fundamental is we think about the user, and the user’s needs aren’t specific to one sector,” Anna says. The one area the agency has chosen to specialise in is accessibility and sustainability, building low-carbon, accessible websites, with team members trained and certified in accessibility best practice.

That local commitment runs deeper than client work: the team has delivered pro bono websites for youth projects, a swimming pool and a museum, and previously won an FSB regional award for community contribution.

The problem that became a product

Rofinery grew out of the agency’s own day-to-day experience. Anna’s husband — a designer and developer by trade — began building a quick proposal builder to get client work out of the door faster. Time tracking came next, then ticketing, then reporting. As other agencies saw what he’d built and asked to use it themselves, the opportunity became clear. “We realised there was real appetite for something built specifically around how agencies work,” Anna says.

Rofinery launched properly last September, with a new business partner on board — a chartered accountant the couple met through agency consultancy training. “He said he’d been looking for a tool that did everything he needed. I said, well, we’re actually building something,” Anna recalls. “I showed it to him, and within an hour, he wanted in on the business.” His financial expertise now underpins Rofinery’s reporting.

An award that recognises the impact

Rofinery’s rise culminated in an award win in May 2026 — recognition Anna puts down to its measurable impact on agency profitability. “The point of Rofinery is it can save you so much time, and then, as an agency owner, you’ve got all this time to turn into actual profitability,” she says. Winner of the Best Agency Software Vendor at the National Digital Awards, this was almost a full circle moment – what started as a platform that was built to address a challenge that We Create Digital faced themselves, now sat as a standalone platform that other agencies could benefit from too.

The numbers, even in the beta phase of Rofinery, backed it up. One agency was able to double their profit margin by recognising they were undercharging and reviewing their pricing, and another cut time spent on invoicing by 50%, worth roughly £9,000 a year in recovered billable time. A third business found it had been overservicing a retainer client by more than 100%, and after addressing this, it actually lead to a stronger relationship with that same client. Anna has felt the impact personally too: since integrating Rofinery with AI tools, a proposal that once might have taken her a week can now take less than a few hours – giving her vital time back in her diary.

Built by an agency, for agencies

Rofinery calculates true staff costs, including overheads, so agencies can quote accurately, flags when a task is running over hours in real time, and gives every team member visibility of their own utilisation, profitability and capacity. The platform is priced simply, with no minimum user thresholds, and remains entirely bootstrapped with no external investment.

Prospective clients who discover Rofinery was built entirely in-house have also started asking what else the team can do for them – leading to a bespoke CRM build and two further projects within a couple of months. It’s a shining example of the capability, skill and experience of the We Create team – showing the ability to create a purpose built platform exactly for the end users’ needs.

Flexibility, family, and the wider community

Behind the growth is a personal story about flexibility. Anna juggles the businesses alongside caring for her three young children, also chairing a school PTA and helping organise the Coggeshall Christmas Market. Through the PTA, she’s helped raise over £20,000 a year for the school, and the committee’s initiatives also provide money for a “Helping Out Fund” that anonymously supports local families in need.

What’s next

Rofinery is a platform that is in constant evolution, driven by the needs of its users. The potential for the platform is exciting, with a mobile app on the roadmap.

For a business built on independence and flexibility, We Create Digital’s story is a genuinely North Essex one: local, community-minded, and quietly building something now used well beyond the county’s borders.

You can find out more about We Create Digital and their work on their website or follow them on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/company/we-create-digital-ltd/

You can find out more about their award winning platform, Rofinery here.