Trading for almost 30 years and acting primarily as an intermediary, the firm has grown to become an all-round commercial finance provider, supporting companies from sole traders up to multinational corporations across the UK.
Over recent years, Bluestone has changed its dynamic to become increasingly customer focused and more directly involved with the end-user market. Taking a consultancy-led approach, Bluestone aims to really embed itself with customers and resellers.
In January 2024, Bluestone worked its way through an exciting rebrand, launching a new website, innovative online finance platform and announced a new name. Previously known to the industry as Bluestone Leasing, the firm decided to remove the word ‘Leasing’, as they felt it didn’t truly sum up what Bluestone was about.
As part of the rebrand process, Bluestone saw a gap in the market to provide an online finance platform where users could, in a series of simple steps, easily access the finance solutions they needed to support their business growth. As such, it set itself the goal of creating a revolutionary online portal that would enable a client to access quick quotes, make full finance applications online and view everything they need all from a personalised dashboard.
The portal looked to integrate directly with a growing number of UK funders via real-time API connections including Novuna, Siemens, Investec, Quantum Funding and Bluestone Capital. These integrations would allow for the real-time quote generation, application submissions and instant decisions in principle, removing the need for manual processing.
“We were impressed with how Rob took the time to get under the skin of the business to truly understand what we wanted to achieve and how that would be mirrored, initially through our new portal and, further down the road, through our website,” says Mark Hargreaves, Finance Director, Bluestone. “Rob was immediately very honest and said that he knew ‘nothing’ about commercial finance – but that’s exactly what we needed.”
He continues: “When you’re in finance, it can be easy to become complacent and use phrases that people outside of this industry aren’t familiar with. We wanted somebody to come to our business with fresh eyes. We gave the team at Target Ink our notes on how we envisaged the portal would look and function. They took everything we said onboard and when they came back with their ideas, there was absolutely nothing we wanted to change.”
Alongside the creation of the portal, Bluestone also needed a new website that had the same feel and energy of the portal. It was important that this was somewhere a visitor could go for the information they needed, as well as creating a clean and user-friendly interface that made it accessible to customers. In addition, Bluestone wanted to introduce SEO, something they hadn’t used for its website previously and, at Target Ink, we worked with the team to achieve that.
“We had a vision about how we wanted the website to look and Matt [from Target Ink] was fantastic at interpreting that,” says Mark. “He came back to us with two initial designs and told us which one he preferred. Having looked at them both, we completely agreed with him - he understood what we wanted and he achieved it.”
We are also supporting Bluestone with a third project, this time for Bluestone Capital, the banking arm of the business. This website needed to appeal to a different audience and be more introducer focused with clear and succinct messaging, whilst still being in line with the Bluestone branding.
Like many of our other clients, Bluestone has signed up to Tick-It, our maintenance and support package. The ticket system means they can keep an eye on what the Target Ink team is doing and have full visibility of what they are paying each month. If there’s a bespoke project, such as the portal, or any additional work, they are very clear on what the cost will be.
“We like the fact that Target don’t just deliver, but they are bold enough to challenge us and this, in turn, makes us challenge our business,” Mark concludes. “It’s confidence like that which means we value their opinion even more. We never stand still at Bluestone, so our portal is an ever-evolving project. We also recognise that our websites need to remain current and having a team like Target Ink alongside us to continue to build on those projects highlights the value to represent to Bluestone.”
