It’s an interesting experience visiting company offices; the décor, the location, even the furniture is nothing if not reflective of the collective psyche, and never is this more true than of app developers and digital children’s book publishers Made in Me. They’re a stone’s throw from the Silicon Roundabout, high up in a portered block, sharp elegant windows framing panoramic views of The City. To put it bluntly it’s a vision of hip entrepreneurial pizazz, blackboards strewn with doodles; an open-plan space replete with the kind of Made.com inspired furniture so beloved of the East End – the cumulative effect that hints at an ethos, a manifesto that tells you something pretty significant is happening - and you wouldn’t be far wrong.

Brainwaves course through the air, ideas buzz and formulate – creativity is at the forefront, and so it should be because we’re in the nucleus, where entrepreneur James Huggins (along with creative director Mike Outlaw) heads up a nine strong team. ‘It’s really nice actually, because you know pretty much everyone around here,’ he says. ‘Even without talking openly, overtly to anyone else, you get this sense of a sort of collective: “Let’s do this!” 

This can-do, life-affirming attitude is at the heart of the Bafta nominated brand, who count among their stable of apps the enchanting early learning experience The Land of Me, in which a myriad of captivating animals vie to inform, educate and entertain, as well as the brilliant Sneak iPad app, described as a ‘joyful digital toy’ by The Guardian (more of this later). So apps first, books second, because let’s not forget the legions of delightful tomes on offer at Me Books, the app and digital publishing arm of the operation where ‘your little ones create personal editions of some of the most popular picture books ever published’ and seminal works are read by celebrities such as Sir David Jason and Richard E Grant. So a whole host of reasons to meet Huggins, and I have to say, he certainly doesn’t disappoint with his charming, affable manner - but more than that it’s his talent for rooting out an idea that will galvanise children that is this entrepreneur’s USP.

But first things first, for a bit of background, Made in Me launched in 2008, though the journey started way back in the nineties. After funding university with a bit of modeling on the side (‘There were very few ways I could think of to make that amount of money in such a short space of time!’), Huggins dabbled with computers and graphic design, and later became involved with Escape Studios; Europe’s leading visual effects academy – (‘a company he helped grow from a startup into one of the foremost digital visual effects academies in the world’). He’s clearly been busy, though his rise had humble beginnings. ‘I was helping out designing their brochures and their website - it just drew me in. As the company grew, one of the original founders left and I took his stake. Then it was just crazy. It went from three people at the beginning (in 2002) and when I left in 2008, I was the MD of the company and there were forty people working there. It was incredible. I described it as: I’ve never had a proper job. Much to the agony of my parents.’

The visual effects industry introduced Huggins to ‘amazingly talented, creative and technical people and that came together with story telling, creative, and art and technology, all kind of crashing together.’ With a two-week-old son and the very real feeling that Escape was in need of ‘a proper MD,’ Huggins made the leap to ‘kiddie mode’. ‘In the beginning, the idea was simple, as much as we wanted to find new ways that technology could be used for the purpose of storytelling. The story part of what we love has naturally drawn us towards publishing.’

So the yellow brick road was paved, but on a day-to-day level where do the ideas come from? ‘All over the place,’ he smiles. ‘Often, they’ll come from observation of real-world situations. It’s best illustrated with Sneak, which is very much based on Grandmother’s Footsteps,’ a game Huggins plays with his children. ‘I pretend to be asleep and they’re on the other side of the room and I close my eyes and they have to creep across the room without making any noise. And we thought, actually, it would be cool if you could creep up on something that was listening. And think about the devices that exist today – they can listen. They can see. And they can feel as well, because the accelerometer in a phone or tablet can detect really fine movement. So it was like: “Hey! What about doing an app that acted that role so you could all do it together?”

Thus the ideas germinated, but what’s the next step? How do the team of nine bring the app to market? ‘When an idea gets beyond that coffee and conversation stage, often Mike and I will sit down with a giant A1 pad and get a big marker and then start literally drawing. We scribble it out. Then we’ll write it up as more of a brief. Then we’ll put it to the various people that we think would be suited to be involved – some are here in the studio, others would be freelancers; a huge network of developers and illustrators and animators, a lot of whom we knew from visual effects. Then we’ll cast it up from there, quote it up, do the maths, look at the business model, the pricing, the kind of thing that we want to do. You know from experience that generally the more quirky a concept is, the narrower your market.’

A single focus group (read Huggins’s two children) is core to the process. ‘I’ve got a four and a seven year old, and another one of the guys has got a wee boy as well. We just stick stuff in front of them. It’s just so great with kids, because they’re not mean. They’re just honest. They’re just sort of: “Well that’s dumb”. Or “That’s funny.” You get refreshingly honest critique.’

His affinity with a younger generation is evident, but what attributes does he consider crucial to the role? ‘You need to be… childish!’ he laughs. ‘In a way, the thing about young kids, is that they have that sort of fearlessness about them. They haven’t made any assumptions… Generally I think the creative process in adults is about trying to recapture that. It’s definitely a kind of playfulness; that sort of childlike bravery. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saintly in as much as money appeals greatly to me, but you wouldn’t get into this space to get rich. If that was your agenda there are probably other, slightly more sure-fire ways of going about that. I think it’s an incredibly exciting space because it’s one of the few industries to work in where it’s new. The gold rush analogy is true, in as much as everyone’s out here panning away.’

Which brings us onto the subject of the mania around app developing; the ‘build it and they will come’ ethos (or is it a delusion?) ‘It’s definitely not true. I think it’s incredibly hard. I was at an event recently where the theme was quite literally: Can you make a living from apps? Kids’ apps, specifically. There is this kind of gold rush mentality with apps, like “Oh man, you should just do an app and then you’re rich!” and I think it’s fuelled by stories you hear about that happening – some eighteen year old has done something and made millions.‘

And some have of course, but never without a seriously well thought out business plan – ah yes, the free vs. paid debate - on which side of the fence does Huggins sit? ‘People argue about various price points in the app store – 69p, £1.49, £1.99 – but psychologically there are really two price points in the app store: there’s free and not free… If you look at the top ten grossing apps (not in terms of chart position but in terms of downloads) certainly the top five or five of them are freemium games. The model clearly works. It’s very effective. But then there are some people who have done very well. Angry Birds: yes, they introduce free light versions of the apps, but they have paid apps. It’s not in-app transactions. The main thing I think is that there are a lot of people marching around, projecting this aura of success, you know: “We know what we’re doing.” No one really knows! It’s so new.’

Luck is clearly a factor, and whether or not children are in danger of experiencing tech overload, there is a place for everything – the lowbrow and the high brow – clearly the market Made in Me is trying to target. It must be rewarding I venture - seeing children enthralled by Sneak, or the myriad animals in The Land of Me? ‘Once or twice you’ve seen someone with your app on their iPhone and you’re like,’ he mimics punching the air. A stand out experience was the chance to go to a school using the apps as a learning device, ‘It was a creative writing class – they were all doing their own stories, writing their own mini comic strips with the characters that they’d taken off into other directions. I think for me that was quite intense because there were thirty kids, they were all in little groups and they were all chatting to each other, saying: “Oh, that character would do this and this, we should do this.” That’s a freak-out in a good way.’

Speaking of school, what advice would Huggins give to those avid technophiles hoping to follow in his footsteps? ‘I’m probably not a good person to ask!’ he laughs. ‘I’d be the careers adviser’s nightmare.’ Hmmm, I’d personally beg to differ - at (‘Thirty…five? Thirty-four? I never remember’), Huggins has achieved a sizeable amount - feats you’d be hard pushed to ignore in the digital age. ‘I think the advice is just… it sounds really useless, but just to start it. Whatever it is you want to do, start it – and start it now. Don’t assume you have to go to school and do those exams and get your degree because you won’t get a job without that. When I was at Edinburgh, they’re four-year courses. And you’re like: “Four years!” It’s basically a quarter of your whole life to date. I maintain – (yes of course, like law, medicine, certain vocations where that amount of training, it really is necessary), but how can you possibly make that decision when you’re probably aware of 3% of the available ways to make a living?’

‘For me, every single thing that I’ve ended up doing that I’ve loved doing – I’ve ended up doing by accident - I did not set out to do this. A part of you has to be deliberately not focused. Just something comes along and that’s the thing you’re going to do. It’s an approach, it isn’t an objective.’

Interview by Alice Kahrmann 2013.