/ About
Charlie & Co. is a family-run practice — owned and run by Melanie Holden, with design, engineering, and infrastructure led by Chad Holden. When you hire the studio, nothing gets lost between departments, because there aren't any.
Charlie & Co. has been building for the web since 2009. Melanie owns and manages the business; Chad leads the craft, with two decades in it — from art direction at the University of Toronto, through senior web and systems roles, to the backend, authentication, and front-end behind STEAM, the national platform Sport Tourism Canada uses to measure the economic impact of events (the economic model itself is Signal49's).
Most agencies hand you between a designer, a developer, and whoever keeps the servers running. Here, the interface, the codebase, and the infrastructure are shaped under one roof — so decisions made in design hold up in production, on servers the studio architects and maintains itself.
We take on a small number of engagements at a time, on purpose. Boutique attention, enterprise-level expertise — and a real person who answers the phone.
/ What we stand for
Accessible by default
Every product ships to WCAG 2.0 AA or higher. It's the baseline, never an upsell — and never an afterthought.
Built to last
Fast, maintainable, standards-based work — not the trend of the month. Built for today, not yesterday.
Under one roof
No handoffs, no finger-pointing. Design, code, and infrastructure decisions all answer to the same small studio.
Honest counsel
If a smaller fix beats a big rebuild, we'll say so. The goal is your result, not our invoice.
/ A bit of background
- 2001
- Art direction, University of Toronto
- 2005
- Senior web & systems roles
- 2009
- Charlie & Co. established
- 2026
- STEAM platform delivered for Sport Tourism Canada