Sense Internet makes 'a stylish exit'

THE first web design company in Leeds, which was founded in the year that Amazon sold its first book online, is to cease trading.

Sense Internet started life in 1995 with a borrowed computer and grew over the years to become a 2m-plus turnover business creating websites for clients such as Asda, Imperial Tobacco and Wrigley.

But the recession hit sales and founder and managing director Aidan Cook deci-ded to call it a day. He told the Yorkshire Post: "It costs an awful lot of money to give everyone their redundancy and it's not up to us to jeopardise their money.

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"We hit a point when we couldn't be confident the company had enough reserves to cover fighting on indefinitely. We are not the sort of company to go bust because we have seen that happen to too many people and it's horrific. We are doing the more stylish exit."

Mr Cook, who turns 40 this Saturday, said: "We have seen clients experience a drop in consumer spending and that's led to the postponement and cancellation of projects and that's been enough to put us in a position where we were concerned about the medium to long-term future."

He added: "We were pioneers of our industry in Leeds and Yorkshire and our decision to close down in no way reflects on the health of that industry, which is something Leeds and Yorkshire should be proud of and should continue to be a success. Half of the industry started off at Sense before they went off to other companies."