About Firston
Senior digital expertise, built around your business.
Firston is an independent digital consultancy for ambitious SMEs. Founded by Brad Thurston, we bring strategy, creative and technology together around the way each business actually works — through long-term partnerships and selected standalone projects.
Our story
Built for businesses that need more than a deliverable.
Firston began with a simple belief: ambitious SMEs should be able to access agency-level thinking and execution without paying for layers of management, repeated onboarding and unnecessary overhead.
A focused project can solve an important immediate need. But the strongest work often begins once we understand the commercial model, the team and the pressures behind the brief. That is why Firston stays close, connects disciplines and remains useful after launch.
We deliberately keep the core team and client roster focused. When a project needs specialist expertise, we bring in trusted people around one strategy and retain responsibility for the whole outcome.
Meet the founder
Brad Thurston
Founder & Creative Director
Brad founded Firston in 2019, bringing together a long-standing interest in web and graphic design with experience in sales, marketing and project management.
The idea was never to build the biggest agency. It was to give ambitious smaller businesses direct access to senior thinking, practical delivery and someone who would understand the business well enough to challenge the brief when needed.
Brad remains directly involved in the work: understanding the commercial problem, shaping the strategy and keeping the different disciplines moving in the same direction. Clients are never handed into an account-management layer after the first conversation.
“The website, campaign or platform is only useful if it makes the business stronger.”
2019
Firston founded
Exeter
Based in the South West
UK-wide
Businesses supported
How we work
The principles behind every engagement.
- 01
Understand before recommending.
We spend the time to learn how your business actually works — commercial model, team, tools — before we suggest a single thing.
- 02
One team, not a supplier list.
Strategy, brand, web, SEO, ads, software. Held together by one accountable team so nothing falls between the cracks.
- 03
Commercial outcomes over deliverables.
Success isn't a launch date. It's revenue, pipeline, retention and the metrics that actually move the business.
- 04
Long over loud.
We work quietly, in the background, for years. The best work we've done is the work our partners have never had to think about.
- 05
Own the operating layer.
Websites, funnels, automations and internal tools designed to compound — an operating system for the business, not a set of assets.
Timeline
How Firston became the business it is today.
2019
Firston founded
Brad brings together a long-standing interest in design with experience across sales, marketing and project management.
2021
Beyond the launch
Early client relationships grow into ongoing partnerships, with Firston staying involved as the businesses evolve.
2023
A broader operating layer
Brand, web, SEO, advertising and software come together so clients no longer have to coordinate disconnected specialists.
2026
Today
Based in Exeter and working across the UK, Firston supports a deliberately focused roster through partnerships and selected standalone projects.