INVESTMENT in the business and the community is paying dividends for a long-established accountancy firm ­— which has relaunched itself to become the "number one" independent firm.

Cowgill Holloway was started by Peter Cowgill ­— who is now chairman of JD Sports ­— more than 30 years ago ­ and it has grown and expanded becoming almost unrecognisable from the small firm of accountants which opened in Chorley New Road, Bolton in 1983.

Now the firm has dropped the Holloway as part of a rebranding exercise and through a new marketing team is working to gets its message across.

Paul Stansfield, Managing Partner said: "We felt that the brand did not quite reflect our attempt to position ourselves in the market place in terms of both client and recruitment.

"A lot has happened in the business over the last couple of years in terms of investment, trying to position ourselves in a particular way and we felt the brand wasn’t quite reflecting that.

"The business today is completely different, it is more forward thinking and much more wider reaching ­— we didn’t have an insolvency team  - it has got the benefit of the years and also had the benefit of investment.

"The firm is entirely different but it still has the same ethos of winning and about growing."

Over the last 18 months the business has invested around £300,000 in its infrastructure, including marketing and IT.

"That was to facilitate organic growth in the business over the next few years, we felt as though we weren’t quite prepared to grow the business. The business has been growing annually, but we felt that the systems and the infrastructure were not there to support it, we now feel as if we are in a position to move forward," said Mr Stansfield.

The company has its eye is on clients using the big national accountancy firms, the smaller businesses ­— for which it has a dedicated arm ­— and those who have outgrown their accountants.

Cowgill now deals with wealth management, insolvency and business funding, an area in which the firm started specialising in 12 month ago.

Rob Lord, Partner (Business Development) said: "We have worked very hard over the last 10 years making sure that we have a full service offering.

“We are attracting growing businesses that are typically with a smaller firm of accountants, that they might have been for with a number of years and get to that natural stage where they want to look at the strategy, the funding, where they are going to take the business and we are winning a lot of clients.

"At the other end of the scale we are getting clients who have been with the large national firms. Here we have a relationship partner model where one partner oversees that client and all of their requirements."

Mr Stansfield said: "We focus our efforts on certain sectors, they are principally growing entrepreneurial businesses strong family lifestyle businesses, property and construction.

"Our future is continuing that independent dominance, both locally and regionally. There is no reason why we can’t reach £20million turnover in the next five years.”

The firm has also taken steps to invest in young people in the community ­— through programmes, including Future Stars, apprenticeships, to attract quality staff ­— and in staff benefits.

Mr Stansfield said: "We have to compete for the better people with other organisations and therefore we have to make ourselves attractive in both the culture of the business and also what we offer.”