Richard's Thoughts on Artumi Systems' 20th Anniversary

Published 24/06/2026

Artumi Systems Ltd celebrates it's 20th anniversary on 26/06/2026. The husband and wife web developer team of Richard and Mandy Fletcher have lived together in Sheffield since 2000, and worked together since 2009. Artumi Systems have worked for over 120 clients including the TUC, The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, Sheffield City Council, David Village Lighting (of Broomhill in Sheffield), and The Nursery Store. They have also created the websites www.pocketsforwomen.co.uk and www.clublaunchpad.com. Additionally Richard is Chair of Sheffield Environment Weeks and Mandy runs a club for women who want to try sports

Richard writes:

On the 26th of June 2006 I bought artumi.com and so began Artumi Systems, which later became Artumi Systems Ltd in 2013. I had the promise of work from an eBay seller, and the desire to work for myself. That was the start of the dream to work for myself.

As it turned out, it was the best decision I made. Artumi Systems has been a lifestyle business, but also a profitable business. Not many businesses last as long as Artumi, about 11.6%, and during that time Artumi has always been a "Micro" business, which makes it similar to 95% of businesses.

My time running Artumi has personally delivered everything I wanted, and so much more. I understood that one of the advantages of working for a small business is that you have to be able to turn to all sorts of different tasks, and that's completely true but maybe even more so in a web development business over 20 years.

A day might include sales, programming, content writing, accounts, meetings, design, systems updates, and so much more. It could feel overwhelming at times, but I wasn't alone for long because Mandy joined me after a few years, and Artumi has been providing the family income since 2009.

So Artumi gave me variety in my work.

At one point we were responsible for systems that were transacting over £40m per year, and then moved the same value stock through warehouses and courier systems. We've built systems that managed £10m in funding per year. We have dealt with health records. Our code has touched the lives of millions of people. We've contributed to major open source projects.

Over 20 years we've completed over 240 projects for over 120 clients.

So Artumi gave us deep meaningful projects.

We have children and I'm glad to say I've been fully involved in their childhood. I was present nearly all mealtimes, and I don't think that would have been true if I were working for someone else.

For the whole time we've been based in Sheffield. Many of those years were working from home, but we did have offices at Regus on Ecclesall Rd for one year, Bank Street Arts for 2 years (RIP), and Sheaf Bank Business Park for 5 years before covid sent us back to home working. Sheffield has been an excellent place for us to work from, because we value that work life balance so much. But also because there are a lot of really clever and interesting people independently getting on with things.

So Artumi gave me control over the work-life balance.

Sheffield tech scene is relatively small, and we made some contacts early on, which have been invaluable. Jerry Lampson is the stand-out partner who we have worked with for most of that time in one way or another. He's such a talented designer, and it's great that we still get to work together.

So Artumi gave us old friends.

More than once we've got to the point where the customers' needs outgrew our ability to provide it without sacrificing work-life balance or control. We had to choose between hiring people or enabling a transition to an in-house team.

So Artumi gave us difficult choices.

So Artumi gave us work security through strong long lasting business relationships.

It's not all been good, we had clients go bust and lost money. We've had a rapidly changing tech landscape, which often actually goes in circles. We've had partners of clients go bust leading to emergency dev work. We've had classically complex problems, such as the box packing problem, or the travelling salesman problem, to handle in the real world.

So Artumi gave us drama :-)

2023 was a big year for us when we stopped working for The Nursery Store, who had increasingly taken up our time, and we had helped them take the development in-house. This left a lot of space and time for us to do something interesting for a while. We decided to make a few websites to scratch our own itches.

Pockets for Women was our first home grown website, and it was Mandy's baby. It was very successful in many ways, Mandy got press coverage and appeared on BBC Scotland Radio, and BBC Sheffield Radio, she appeared in the Times, the Huffington post, and Grazia.

Club Launchpad is our second and is an ambitious attempt to enable people to start, find and run new clubs easily.

So Artumi gave us creative freedom.

Throughout twenty years of web development we've adapted to changing technologies. AI is the next major shift, and we're interested to see how much it can help our clients while maintaining the detail heavy undestanding that have enabled us to solve hard problems since 2006.

Richard Fletcher
June 2026