The story behind.. Someone you know
- by Michelle Brouwers
- 3 min reading time
How it all started
Our creative history dates back to 2007. During our months-long journey as a creative couple, we decided to start our own business. Combining our marketing, concept, copy and graphic/web design skills was perfect for helping a wide range of clients set up their websites and design print and corporate identity. After some close partnerships with various development companies, we even decided to create our own CMS system. It was before the hundreds of online applications became accessible to the general public.The years went by and our interest in the rapidly changing internet world continued to grow. We realized that we had to change something about our own proposition. By 2010, there were so many full-service Internet companies that we decided to change course. When so much knowledge is available, why don't we focus on one thing, make sure we become the best at something and then we find someone else who can help us.
Facebook got bigger and bigger, online shopping is getting popular and we are experiencing a trend among our own customers who are becoming more interested in selling their own products online. Just before the enormous growth in the e-commerce market, we are launching our new business model:
"Design my webshop".
We help people set up an online store so they can focus on what they do best: making handmade products, running a business, selling their niche products etc if it has nothing to do with design or development.
Within a year we will become the official design partner of the – by then – largest SAAS solution in the Netherlands: Mijnwebwinkel. In the years that followed, we gathered a team of passionate designers. This team is still the core of our company today. We followed all trends in e-com, web design, UX and helped more than 1500 customers to set up their online store.
But the internet is changing fast and so are we. The market is growing, the competition in web shops is getting bigger and bigger, so that our customers demand more because they have to stand out in order to survive.
We split as a team and started a new company, hired developers and expanded our team to serve the "bigger clients and enterprices". Some companies just needed more functionalities and with our experience in the e-commerce industry it is a pity to stay focused on 1 provider.
Our new company DMWS became an official Lightspeed partner within 3 months. After 2 years we have 4 themes in the themestore with more than 1000 subscriptions. Our portfolio consists of leading companies and companies, both nationally and internationally (such as Bavaria, ID&T, SLAM FM, Basic Fit). It is a reward for all the years of hard work and a testament to our knowledge, dedication and enthusiasm.
Our creativity is endless, even between the boundaries of the software, we have been keeping 90% of our customers satisfied for over 7 years. We helped some of them by switching to another system, such as Magento. We are glad to know some good developers who could help us.
Throughout all these years, we've been watching Shopify. Now Shopify is prepared for the European and especially Dutch market, we are ready to take the next big step, we can't wait to help customers set up a webshop within a SAAS solution that can handle our inexhaustible creativity.