Onyx
London
Website: Onyx
Type of agency: Social commerce
Founders: Luke Townsin, Martin Kelly and Stephanie Carr
Year founded: 2025
Headcount: 17
Office: London
It started as a talk about TikTok and spiraled from there.
Profile
One of the newer kids on the block, Onyx only set up shop in 2025 but is already scattering seeds for growth.
The brain child of ex-TikTok creative exec Luke Townsin, Kepler’s Stephanie Carr and Martin Kelly, who co-founded Infectious Media back in 2008, Onyx’s laser sharp focus on TikTok Shop has seen it grow to 17 employees over the past year, operating two live-shopping studios in London.
Having worked at TikTok for several years, Luke could see first-hand that advertisers were not using the social commerce platform to its full potential. Google, Meta and Amazon all had a partner ecosystem; TikTok and the creator economy seemed like the next best bet. Luke and Martin put their heads together and decided they would be the ones to fill that nascent and growing gap.
Fast forward 12 months and the business has grown far beyond their expectations. The agency is working with top brands including Berghaus, Pandora, Vans and Crocs, the latter of which it helped to achieve over £1m in gross merchandise value in one month.
The agency is headquartered in London but operates in the EU market, which means it can scale a brand from its live shopping studios in Shepherd’s Bush. For now, it offers a lean, cost-effective way of working for this UK start-up, but Onyx will be investing in more people, infrastructure and the product as TikTok becomes more sophisticated and demand grows.
TikTok is where it’s at now, but Onyx will likely look to diversify its product offering in future - particularly to other high-growth channels such as YouTube and eBay Live.
“If you’re just platform-centric, that carries a degree of risk because you can’t predict how things will work out,” says Luke, who is also carefully considering how to scale in a sustainable way. This means building the structure and foundations needed to remain durable over the next five years.
Onyx is essentially on ground zero now but – looking at already-evolved social commerce markets like China – it feels like there is plenty of room to shape this burgeoning space in the UK.