Mike Nash signed up for a Creative Works membership in 2021 when the office he was working in closed down to make way for retail space.
“I booked a tour, had a look around and it just had the right vibe and mix of what I needed and wanted. The price was good and it’s better equipped than where I was before.”
A couple of existing members also recommended Creative Works to Mike. But they weren’t the only people he knew who were already familiar with the space.
Before Mike was even born, his father worked in Gnome House, the building Creative Works now calls home (with Inky Cuttlefish on the ground floor and residential flats on the third).
At that time, Gnome House was occupied by a factory that specialised in lift parts – and before that it was used to make “Gnome” engines for WW1 fighter planes, hence the name.
In fact, many of the buildings in the area were factories at one time or another. Mannequin House next door originally produced…you guessed it: mannequins.
Starting a business in a pandemic
Mike is the founder and creative director of the branding agency, SoreThumbStudio®.
“Making the shift from being a freelancer to forming an agency – from the ‘me’ to the ‘we’ – felt weird at first. We started the agency in January 2020.
“We’d launched on the back of a couple of huge projects in 2019, so thought ‘now’s the right time to kickstart this thing’.” Then the world got Covid, putting everyone’s plans on hold.
SoreThumbStudio® spent the next couple of months watching their pipeline fall away, with most clients pressing the ‘pause’ button on projects.
Fortunately, things started to pick up in the late summer and it’s been “non-stop” ever since. It gradually built up again and by 2021 it was relentless. All the stuff that didn’t happen in 2020 suddenly took off.
Branding for niche and emerging consumer products
SoreThumbStudio specialises in positioning and building consumer brands.
Mike (and his team) help people and businesses understand their market, identify opportunities, name creations, and design their brand and packaging.
SoreThumbStudio® loves working with existing and emerging food and drink brands but is open to working with businesses in other sectors too, as long as they are committed to “doing the right thing”.
“At the moment we’re working with a Hard Kombucha startup called Happy J’s.
“Hard seltzer – which is essentially fizzy water with alcohol – is a huge trend at the moment. But they’re a bit empty in the sense that they’re low in calories and don’t have a lot else.
Kombucha naturally contains a miniscule amount of alcohol, but Happy J’s have taken the alcohol content up a few notches. Being probiotic, it also has some health benefits too.
“Another product we’re working on is an England-first. It’s called Breadrin and it’s a new kvas brand, which is also probiotic and made from bread rather than tea.
The team is also working with an industrial cleaning firm whose products are microbe-based, meaning they don’t harm wildlife if they enter the water course through the treatment process.
Being a trustee at the Pumphouse Museum
A fan of all things local, Mike is a trustee at the Walthamstow Pumphouse Museum.
At some point he’ll be working on some branding work for the museum, but for now the focus is on transforming the site and enhancing the museum experience.
The museum has two 1967 tube stock Victoria Line carriages in its collection which are available to hire. Fashion brands like Burberry have used them for photoshoots.
The current plan is to add a new entrance to the grade II listed museum, raise the floor and reconfigure the entire site.
“It’s one of the few places left in Walthamstow that hasn’t been gentrified, let’s say. It’s not really got an agenda and isn’t about overpriced hot dogs and caramel oat milk lattes.
(Note: You can buy a cheese and ham sandwich and a cup of tea and have change from a fiver!)
“It probably does need a bit of gentrification though. I’ve seen so many businesses fail because they haven’t adapted. You need to adapt to capture Walthamstow’s new audience.”
The museum is open every Sunday between 10:30 and 15:30 and admission is free. A supperclub is held every Thursday, Friday and Saturday evening with a Latin inspired menu.
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