Happy 10th Birthday, 5874!

We recently celebrated our 10th Birthday!

A few weeks ago in Stratford-upon-Avon we brought the team together for a family fun day.  It was a great celebration, not only because the sun was shining and the drinks were flowing, but because we got to be together.  After the last few years, it felt pretty special indeed. So here we are, 10 years on, remembering our past, celebrating our present and raising a glass to whatever the future has in store.  

5874 Commerce began when two brothers, using the last four digits of their childhood phone number, built a family.   It all started in a broom cupboard (ok, a small office) above a Blockbusters with just one member of staff, when we built one of the first ever websites on BigCommerce – and now, ten years later with a team of 30, the business is building websites for the likes of Carluccios, Virbac, Peter Christian to name a few – plus, we’re the leading elite, award-winning BigCommerce partner.  

The world has changed a lot over the last ten years:  Obama ran for re-election, Boris was the mayor of London hanging on a zip wire opening the London Olympics and Facebook was about to go public on the stock market.   58 have done some pretty cool stuff too – like standing up a website for Diageo in a week, launching seven enterprise stores in a month, flying drones and hosting a pitch n putt in a Heathrow warehouse.   We also helped to co-found a homeless charity called Let’s Feed Brum.  Formed from a conversation about selling Christmas party tables and food waste, the charity now feeds 130 people a night in the centre of Birmingham with a bank of 200 volunteers, raising over £100k a year to help Birmingham’s homeless.  Over the Queen’s recent Jubilee celebrations, Let’s Feed Brum received royal recognition, being honoured with the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service (QAVS). The equivalent to an MBE for charities, the QAVS shines a light on the fantastic work of groups like Let’s Feed Brum from across the nation, and is the highest award given to local voluntary groups.

So what’s next?

The main reason for our success has been our people; the team behind the technology who show us every day how talented, passionate and loyal they are. Helping our team to grow both personally and professionally has always been a huge part of what we have strived to do and something that we have recently built upon with our newly launched Learning & Development and Mentoring programs.  We’ve also been thinking hard about the kind of company we want to be – the impact we want to have.  We’re focusing a lot on sustainability and have undertaken a huge whitepaper project researching 100 merchants and analysing the commitment they have to helping the environment.  Creating positive change when it comes to representation within the eCommerce industry is also a huge focus too – our women in eCommerce campaign, The Women’s Domain, is identifying the challenges faced and guiding us on how we as individuals and as a company can do better. 

Partnerships

Team work really does make the dreamwork .  The eCommerce eco-system is built upon partnerships between agencies, platforms and a whole host of technology partners coming together to enable merchants to build the best solutions for their customers.  Growing and innovating with partners such as BigCommerce, Adyen and Akeneo to name a few is what we’re about and we’re excited to push the next boundary of what’s deemed possible with them. 

Thank you to everyone who makes 58 the company it is and we can’t wait to see what happens next. 

Watch this space.