INDIANAPOLIS, IND. — Indianapolis businesses are being formed faster than at any point in recent history, and a new Fountain Square agency wants to help them get their name out.

New business formation is running at a record pace nationally, with the U.S. Census Bureau reporting the strongest first half on record for new business applications in 2026.

That growth is playing out locally too, and Millworks, a boutique creative agency opening this year in Fountain Square, was built to meet it, pairing journalism-grade public relations with marketing strategy for businesses and nonprofits that are building something and need help telling people about it effectively.

"In many ways, this is a wonderful time to be starting Millworks in Indianapolis," co-founder Shelby White said. "We wanted to build an agency that could grow with that energy, one that gives new and growing businesses the same senior-level attention a big brand would get, without the big-agency price tag."

White is a three-time Keystone Media Award-winning journalist whose reporting career took her from the anchor desk to the boardroom. As a business and finance journalist, she built a reputation for asking difficult questions before she was recruited to answer them.

White became the sole communications officer for a $2 billion publicly traded financial institution, serving as spokesperson and advisor to the CEO. When Covid-19 hit, she ran crisis communications across dozens of branches and helped steer the company through activist shareholder challenges that put its reputation on the line.

At a national culinary company, she led communications for a workforce spread across the country, keeping employees and leadership connected through a period of leadership crisis. And she executed a nine-county campaign to reposition a region's economic story, branding the region for major employers and talent while crafting the messaging behind a landmark announcement from Gov. Braun.

"Businesses come to us when they are serious about getting their marketing and communications right," White said.

Co-founder Molly Welch is central to Millworks. A Purdue University graduate, she’s managed year-round, weekly farmers markets with more than 120 vendors, a logistical operation that demands the same precision she brings to client campaigns.

She’s also planned and lead programs and events for a major economic development organization and helped lead the marketing behind it, building a following through social media. She is a marketing strategist and digital creator. That hands-on experience with campaign budgets is why she and White built Millworks around a problem most agencies would rather not discuss.

This isn't old news. WPP, the world's largest ad agency, is being sued by a former executive who says he was fired for trying to expose an illegal rebate scheme. His amended complaint, filed this month, cites a Sony Pictures investigation that found WPP hid client rebates through shell companies, keeping an estimated $350 million while passing along just $110 million in China alone."

A decade-old industry study first documented the underlying practice, known as principal trading, with markups ranging from roughly 30% to 90%, and a follow-up survey found 43% of advertisers still report serious transparency concerns.

"This is exactly what we mean," Welch said. "A story like the WPP case makes national news because it's the extreme version of something happening unnoticed, on a smaller scale, in agencies all over the country, including here. Most agencies won't tell you they're marking up your media buy, or that a chunk of your impressions never reached a real person. We show clients exactly where every dollar goes, we don't take an undisclosed cut on media we place, and a senior person works your account from day one, not an intern.”

That focus on performance matters because not every marketing dollar reaches a real customer. The Association of National Advertisers' 2025 programmatic transparency study found that $26.8 billion in U.S. programmatic ad spend went to waste last year, with only 43.9% of budgets reaching consumers as viewable impressions rather than bots or fraudulent traffic.

White chose Fountain Square. The neighborhood is built on independent shops, music venues, people who make things with their hands. She wanted Millworks to work the same way: small, hands-on, made rather than mass-produced.

In addition to Indianapolis, the agency takes clients in Lafayette and across Central Indiana, drives out when it helps, works remotely when it doesn't, and has a client in New York.

The broader industry data backs the timing too. IBISWorld counted more than 105,000 U.S. advertising agencies in 2025, part of a field that has grown at roughly 6.6% a year since 2020, and Census-derived figures compiled by Statista show the number of public relations firms nationally has climbed nearly 7% over the past decade.

At the same time, HubSpot's 2026 State of Marketing report found most marketers now believe the industry is undergoing its biggest disruption in 20 years due to AI, with brands lacking a clear point of view getting lost in the flood of automated content. Separate research from Edelman's 2026 Trust Barometer found unpaid, earned coverage is roughly five times more effective than paid brand messaging at building trust with skeptical audiences.

Services range from occasional creative support to full-service strategic partnership, including brand development, copywriting, public relations, media buying, campaign planning, social content and crisis communications, structured to scale from a single monthly request to dedicated ongoing work.

Millworks has already taken on clients in consumer products and analytics, providing brand strategy, launch support and press outreach.

About Millworks
Founded in 2026, Millworks is a boutique creative studio based in the Fountain Square neighborhood of Indianapolis, serving businesses and nonprofits throughout Central Indiana. Founded by Shelby White and Molly Welch, Millworks pairs journalism-grade public relations with marketing strategy, offering brand development, copywriting, campaign planning, social content, event support and crisis communications. The studio's mill-inspired name reflects its approach: raw material in, refined product out, built on fair pricing and senior-level work on every account. Learn more at themillworks.net.

Media Contact
Shelby White, Co-founder
Millworks
[email protected]
(814) 952-3441


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