INSIDER MAGAZINE: Anthologie managing director Amy Sutton on the global reach of her purpose-led business

Creating positive outcomes for people and planet is the driving force behind Amy Sutton’s purpose-led design and digital consultancy business. Based out of converted warehouse office space in East Perth, Anthologie counts Harvard University, Sustainable Ocean Alliance, American Bird Conservancy and the Australian and WA Governments among its impressive list of clients. Since taking over the business eight years ago, Sutton has expanded Anthologie to 13 staff and is making waves on a global scale while also being aligned with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, including being a carbon neutral company. “Doing some good in the world is what drives us,” Sutton says. “If we are working in the corporate sector we are looking at how we can bring social and community value to brands and if we are working with, say, a not-for-profit or government, it’s more around how we can help them tell their story, drive a movement, change behaviour, how do we bring information to people in a way that becomes accessible and usable to create change? It is a really exciting time to do what we do.” Recent projects include designing a household calculator for Carbon Positive Australia, which allows individuals and households to access their carbon footprint and offset or make positive changes. And Anthologie doesn’t shy away from tricky problems, recently teaming with the Department of Communities on an application to aid people experiencing homelessness. “The application is really transformational and something that has never been done anywhere in the world,” Sutton says. “It aims to put control back in the hands of those experiencing homelessness so they can control their data and decide who to share it with. It also reduces the amount of times they have to repeat what can be a very traumatic story.” Another aim is to improve visibility as to where a claim or support request is at within the system, something that has been lacking in the past. “They can see where things are at in terms of getting support, emergency accommodation and those sort of things, at every stage,” she says. “We have just completed the design work on that which involves lots of engagement with peoples’ lived experience, rough sleepers, young people, old people, people with limited technology use, people who have got drug and alcohol issues. We’re now heading into the development stage. So that will launch next year.” Anthologie has also been tasked with working on a federal campaign to support and raise career aspirations of children in regional, remote and rural communities through the Department of Education. “The research says that what we can’t see, touch and feel is really difficult to imagine, so it is looking at how we bring that experiential thing into the regions,” Sutton says. Despite her success, Sutton never really intended to be a business owner. “I describe it as like I tripped and fell into it,” she says. Initially she wanted to follow in her grandmother’s footsteps and become a vet but after failing to get into vet school she shifted to zoology at the University of Western Australia. However, the heavy focus on science was not what she had expected. She dropped out after 10 weeks and started working with her mother who was running a design and typesetting company, Christype. “My mum had a very successful business which she started in the mid-70s and grew it into one of the largest typesetting houses in WA,” she says. “Mum was a bit of a powerhouse particularly because the advertising and media sector was quite male dominated at the time. She trained me up as a map operator originally, so I kind of got the technology down and then moved across to design.” At 22, Sutton upped sticks to head to the bright lights of Hong Kong, she then moved to London and stayed for 11 years. “When I got to London I very quickly realised I was not cut out to be a designer,” she says. “But what I did understand was business and what I loved was people and relationships so I moved over to the account service side of things and worked for a number of really big agencies in the UK, working on big budget work for massive multinationals like Bloomberg, Ernst & Young, GlaxoSmithKline, BP, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. “The work I was doing with them was around finding the truth and the core of a brand and being able to express that in an experimental way to help recruit, attract and retain really great people.” A natural born optimist, Sutton says she’s never been short on confidence and it helped her make the most of every opportunity that came her way. “It’s been an opportunistic life, it’s been grabbing every opportunity that comes to me and probably to some degree relying a fair bit on blind confidence,” she says. “I remember when I was around 27 my boss at the time said to me, ‘Amy your capability has finally caught up with your confidence’. Moving into account services was perfect for me. I had the gift of the gab and was able to create relationships and connect with people.” After 11 years in London, Sutton was burnt out and decided the time was right to move back to Perth. In 2015 she bought her mother’s downsized business, which was then called Linkletters and operating with two staff members. “The business was operating quite successfully so that allowed me time to figure out what it is we wanted to do and how we wanted to do it,” she says. “We stayed relatively small for the first couple of years, we only had about four or five people. After a year we rebranded as Anthologie and from there the business has just grown and grown.” Sutton credits her success to the people she’s brought on board. “It’s the people I’ve worked with that have made the difference to my business,” she says, adding that hiring staff with diverse skills, experiences and backgrounds has been most impactful. “I think an early mistake I used to make was hiring people in my mirror image, whereas it’s actually that combination of skills and different approaches and people coming together that really works. Finding amazing people that complement my skills has been crucial. “The problems we work on are pretty gnarly, complex problems so it requires multiple skill sets so we are able to bring multiple disciplines into the equation to find solutions.” Sutton says the best business advice she has ever received is that all profit comes from risk. “You need to be brave and just throw something out there and if it doesn’t work, you just have to deal with it,” she says. “Holding back and trying to appease too many people and meeting in the middle doesn’t yield the best results.” While Sutton doesn’t rule out expanding the business over east, she says that she also doesn’t see being Perth-based as a hindrance to securing global projects or clients. “I think we can certainly operate on a global stage,” she says. “As a business we leverage global trends and we have picked up three global clients in the last 12 months, so what that says to me is we can actually pitch up against global firms and we can do the work from here.” For Sutton, the most important thing is to never compromise on Anthologie’s ethical standards. “I am most proud of the fact that I have built a business that I genuinely believe in and that is really true to the vision,” she says. “I’m not saying we’ve got it 100 per cent right. But through all of the challenges that we experience, I can be really proud of the DNA of Anthologie. We genuinely do what we say we are going to do.”