"All I had was an idea, a laptop, a pokey, mouldy bedroom and £10k to turn my idea into a reality."

From experience, I knew that knocking on wealthy clients' doors was going to be a waste of my time. Instead, I focused on speaking to architects and convincing them of the benefits of having someone on their side to help their sustainability-minded clients figure out which renewable heating and hot water system would be the best option for their new eco home, how much it would cost and what the savings would be. I'll never forget the feeling of elation when, in my first week, I successfully convinced two local architects that I would add value to their clients' projects and put two proposals together which were rapidly accepted.

That was all the confirmation I needed. I knew I was onto something. Mesh Energy was born! 

Hand on heart, my big ‘why’ back in 2012 was to offer clients and architects the ability to make better informed decisions based on real facts, not sales greenwash.

Our mission remains close to that, but has evolved slightly to: To instil confidence and pride in low energy buildings through intelligent design. Our purpose or ‘why’ has also evolved into something higher level and is now: To inspire and forge a sustainable legacy. You can read more about our story and purpose on our About page.

In a wider context, there have been some huge changes in the world, particularly in the last two years, which have resulted in us being in the right place at the right time. When I started Mesh, sustainability was important to two sets of people:

1. 'Eco nerds' who genuinely cared about their carbon footprint but were often extreme in their views and had little money
2. Wealthy people with disposable income who wanted to ‘keep up with the Joneses’ - who happen to have had a funny thing called a heat pump installed!

Now in 2020, issues like global warming, the climate crisis, a global pandemic, rapid deterioration in air quality have all led to a much wider public awareness of sustainability and sustainable living. This increased 'consumer consciousness' opens the doors and allows us to have meaningful conversations with anyone, helping to further their knowledge and leading to a better chance that they will listen to us and make changes, however small.

As service offerings go, I have always asked our clients "what else could we be doing to improve our offering?" From our initial renewable energy feasibility studies, we can now cover the full gamut of services from initial design to final completion and energy monitoring for almost any building imaginable.

"From our initial renewable energy feasibility studies, we can now cover the full gamut of services from initial design to final completion and energy monitoring for almost any building imaginable."

The aforementioned rapid growth of public awareness combined with tightened regulation and other professional movements has led to great team growth for us. Two years ago I had just taken on my second employee. We are now a team of seven and we will be hiring more in the coming months. The depth of expertise in the team is astounding. Thanks to taking on a diverse team from a wide range of technical and non-technical backgrounds, we have a rich mix of highly capable individuals who are hungry to learn, improve, and be the best. This is now deeply ingrained in our company culture.

 "The brand refresh symbolises our development and maturity as a business with an industry-leading team."

Of course, in order to move forward and achieve our goal of becoming the UK's leading renewable energy consultancy, we should be worrying about what's best for our clients and their projects, not whether or not our logo is up to scratch or how up to date our website is.

Over the past few years, while growing the Mesh team and focusing on our wider business goals, we have struggled to make sense of our marketing strategy. We have also realised that the quality of the partners we work with have become more key as the business grows. Russ and Tim from Avery & Brown, our new digital marketing and creative agency, are like an extension to our exciting team and they bring qualities and an ethos that directly complements what Mesh is all about.

More than a new website - a comprehensive knowledge hub

As one of the main pillars of our marketing toolkit, the Mesh website to date has been letting us down. As clear communication is one of our USPs, what we say and what the website presented were rapidly drifting apart.

Over the last 12 months, the business has evolved significantly from being a holistic energy consultancy which produces reports and designs renewable heating systems to an industry thought leader, educator, and provider of valuable resources.

We knew we needed a new website which would not only pay lip service to the visual evolution of the brand, but which would also do justice to the knowledge of the team and how we are now portrayed by our clients, prospects and partners. As such, the new website is more of an information portal and resource library than it is a brochure of our services.

 "The new website is more of an information portal and resource library than it is a brochure of our services."

In our main menu navigation in the site header, you will see an entirely new library of pages under the top-level Resources page. We will add to these pages on a regular basis, but already you will find links to:

• Our Book - Right First Time: An architect's practical guide to planning and delivering low-energy home projects
• The Mesh App - quickly and easily search for renewable energy technology installers in your local area
• Our Embodied Carbon Calculator - a highly valuable free tool for architects
• A list of our upcoming free CPD webinars
• Our most Frequently Asked Questions
• And, of course, our Insights - where we publish our news, views, and thought leadership pieces



Another major site upgrade is our Projects page, and the individual project pages themselves. We feel that these pages are now much more befitting of the architecture world and, more importantly, that they show off the amazing projects we've had the privilege of being involved.

A bright future for Mesh Energy and holistic low-energy building design

The future for Mesh is bright. We have a plethora of ideas for how we can continually improve and help far more people reduce energy and carbon in the built environment. We are excited by the opportunity for massive change and we expect that the RIBA 2030 Climate Challenge will have a big impact on holistic building design as well as improved building regulation standards.

As you have hopefully seen by way of our new Resources page, we are focused heavily on producing educational content to help people learn about sustainable design in a range of formats. In addition, we are working on creating more useful industry design tools and leveraging software and processes internally to deliver higher quality analysis and support for projects at higher volume.

Particular services we think will be more readily used over the next few years include energy and air quality monitoring, as well as overheating and embodied carbon analysis as a standard for every project.

So much to do and so little time! Thanks for being a part of our journey.

Doug