‘We follow the revenue’: Mat Baxter happy to ‘eat humble pie’ on local launch backflip
After asserting last year there were no plans for a physical presence in Australia, Huge global CEO, Mat Baxter is happy to “eat humble pie”, with new revenue leading the company to local shores.
“A lot of things changed,” he told Mumbrella. “We had a very big client engage us in Australia through Ben, which hadn’t happened at that point, and which did happen subsequent to that.”
‘I eat humble pie’ says Baxter as revenue flips local plans
“Australia is an active and viable market for us,” Baxter told the Mumbrellacast last year. “Are we going to establish a physical office with a physical footprint? No. Not in the foreseeable future. We don’t feel we need to.”
Now, he is happy to be flipping on that, based on business bringing the company to Australia.
“My ethos, at least, has always been go where the revenue takes you, so the revenue has taken us to Australia.”
The means of setting up in Australia is “pretty light”, he said, with Huge’s hybrid model. Skelsey will be the “front door” in Australia, servicing the local client base, connecting to the global network to deliver the work.
“And so yes, I eat humble pie and say, I said no there wasn’t a plan, and now six months later I’m here talking to you about the fact we’re working in Australia and we’re working on an Australian client, but we’ve got demand, and we’ve got clients buying the products that we are selling.”
“So we wanted to exploit and make the best of that opportunity, and that’s what we’re doing.”
Can Baxter and Skelsey share details of the foundation client locally? No, not right now, but the pair said it is a “major engagement, in line with some of our biggest global engagements”.
Baxter continued: “I think Australia is a very forward-thinking, progressive, brave, creatively driven market. And that’s why we are here, because we think Australia will buy what we are selling, and if we didn’t, we wouldn’t be here.”
Catch a full discussion of the local launch of Huge in Australia in last week’s Mumbrellacast.
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Calum Jaspan was news editor at Mumbrella, based in Melbourne. He was also the producer and host of the Mumbrellacast. He left Mumbrella in May 2023.
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