A creative digital agency which won the New Business Of The Year title at last year's The Press Business Awards, is now hoping to repeat its success in this year’s Small Business category.

The Distance, based at York Science Park, is now an 18-strong creative digital agency specialising in ecommerce, mobile applications and digital marketing.

Director Ryan Atkins, 22, has also put himself forward in the Young Entrepreneur Of The Year category.

The company’s client base, from start-ups to multi-billion turnover enterprises, has been bolstered since winning last year’s award and now the company has employed a further eight people across its three departments.

It has taken on some of its biggest clients to date, including the NHS, Fera, Linda Farrow and a host of increasingly successful start-ups. Turnover is up more than 400 per cent and profit is soaring.

Ryan said: “Our strategy thus far has been fairly simple, deliver exceptional quality and scale our commercial relationships with our clients, building on the success of the work we create for them.

“Handling the growth in a sustainable fashion has been this year's key challenge. Our next challenge is making our mark on York, where we intend to invest in a much larger new office.

“Our staff are incredibly dedicated and we intend to invest in that team and the culture to provide an inspirational, comfortable and productive environment to allow them to do their best work to date.

“In the next year, we will be looking to become Customer First accredited and achieve Investors In People status to ensure we maintain our 100 per cent staff-retention rate.”

Ryan has been invited to speak at a number of industry events and has recently set up a private investment company, focusing on online retail business.