Our Story
Shaping the world
of flexible work
Arc was started by university friends Mike and Paul in a small room in Liverpool. The company has since grown into a nationwide event staffing agency with 30 full-time employees, 12,000 team members and 6 hubs across the UK.
2008
It’s 2008, the world is feeling the effects of a financial recession, Liverpool is the UK’s City of Culture and Kings of Leon are at number 1.
A 20-year-old Michael Gavin sets up a hospitality recruitment company from a small room in Liverpool. With only one client - Liverpool Football Club - he recruits, trains, and allocates 50 people into retail and hospitality positions. The event is a huge success leading to more bookings and the start of a long-term partnership.
After a few months at the helm, Mike is joined by his former university housemate Paul Marcinkowski and the business picks up a pace. By the end of 2008, we’ve secured 5 major clients and have over 500 Team Members on our books.
2010
After settling and expanding in Liverpool, our second venture was to the capital. Our London office was set up in October 2013 and quickly became a big success.
The London office now has one of our biggest operations teams providing Team Members to prestigious clients all around the city.
Over the next 5 years, we established a presence in 3 other major UK cities, Manchester, Birmingham and Edinburgh. Working with the biggest venues in these areas, we quickly built up a talented pool of Team Members for a variety of hospitality roles.
2020
While the world stood still, we were forced to take a step back and think hard about why we do what we do. We always wanted to be more than just a recruitment company, but the pre-covid events industry rarely gave us time to focus on how we could do that.
Michael and Paul spent a lot of time during lockdown, discovering their “why” and exploring where they want the business to be. They realised that they could have a positive and lasting effect on the recruitment industry. And so formed our vision:
2022 and beyond
After making it through a challenging two years and putting lockdowns behind us, we began exploring how we can achieve our vision and where we want the business to be by 2025.
We currently have 30 full-time employees, 12,000 and 6 hubs all spread across the country. By 2025 we want to grow our team, invest in local people and help even more businesses.