On the 29th of September Imagered celebrated its 10th birthday.
We would like to thank all of our customers (some of whom have been with us the full 10 years) for their continued support through all the good times and the bad times and we would like to assure you that we will be here for the next 10 years and more, continuing to provide unrivalled service and reliability for your media requirements whatever they be and whatever the financial climate, we will continue to provide you great savings without compromising quality.
Back in 1999 five of us sat down round the table and decided that all the internet companies around at that time where miles away from where they needed to be and that a massive hole was missing for a company that could deliver stunningly visual websites combined with experienced technical aspects pioneering what web sites could do for your company.
Who are those five I hear you ask. Richard Prestons (Chairman), Lee Collins (MD), Chris Watson (FD), Konrad Mclean (Art Director) and Micheal Gibbin (Technical Director).
We first called the company MIWS (Motor Industry Web Services) to deal with internet solutions specifically for the motor trade with initial startup customers of a BMW and a Land Rover dealership. We quickly produced these web sites which delivered results straight away and this quickly brought us into contact with other motor dealerships and so the company developed creating internet solutions for numerous dealerships and sole traders in the motor trade.
We set up Evolve software as a company that would develop and create bespoke software solutions. We had very good early success by securing contracts with 4 police forces to supply a new and market leading video identification system called Promat.
Next came the inception of a general purpose web site company to encompass not just the needs of the motor trade but other areas of business as well. And so Red Mammoth was born, we chose this name as at the time the internet was seen as a new and funky thing that business's did not understand and also carried with it stigmas such as web designers running around carrying snow boards under there arms. This was known as the initial boom time of the internet and lots of people were ploughing large amounts of money into business's they did not understand and that actually held no intrinsic value.
Of course the bubble had to burst at some point and did it burst; you bet it did, it burst with massive ramifications as the stock market finally realised that they were valuing companies at billions which were actually worth peanuts. A lot of people lost a lot of money when the internet market crashed. By this time we were in a strong enough position to ride this storm and continued to produce solid quality websites at a cost effective price.
Evolve software was starting to do very well as we were creating large scale bespoke applications software for the business sector including systems too numerous to mention from CNC microchip controllers for large industrial machines to CRM Management software, there was no system to challenging for us to build and build we did.
Promat as a product continued to grow from strength to strength encompassing most of the police forces in the country and creating oversees interest which now sees us in 5 countries around the world.
As time went on Chris Watson the Financial Director decided he wanted new challenges and sold his shares and moved on to running the finances for Zen Internet, I believe that now he is living in australia and if you do read this article Chris, good luck and try not to get too sun burnt, watch out for those large spiders as well I hear they can be quite nasty.
The next stage of evolution for the business was to re-brand as now the internet bubble had burst and internet companies that were going to survive had to change thier way of thinking and come into the real world, hence we dropped the name Red Mammoth and re-invented ourselves as Image Red which we are using to this day. With the new brand came new directions for the business, we realised that in order to survive the coming years we needed to expand our services and diversify our selves into new areas. we encompassed Evolve Software and MIWS into Image Red and discontinued use of the company names.
Of course we continued to keep with our core business traditions of internet web development and bespoke software development, every company needs a rock to lean against and we were lucky enough to have two rocks. We had a vision to create a company that could encompass all business needs around marketing from key rings, business stationary, billboards, business forms, web sites, web hosting, media advertising, bespoke software systems development, email hosting etc the list goes on, for a full list please see the home page of this web site by clicking
www.imagared.co.uk . Our vision saw us as a company that could handle everything regarding marketing your business to create a one stop shop and a single point of contact for any requirement you as a customer may have.
Next in our historical journey came the resignation of Konrad Mclean, he had come to a point in his life where he needed change and sold his shares and moved into managing a large internet agency in Manchester whilst also producing his own music album in his custom built music studio.
This left the 3 of us to continue the vision with renewed vigor and purpose with a dash of vim, We found that we needed to increase our staff significantly to encompass all of our new services and products and in order to maintain our software contracts we set up a dedicated technical support team delivering instant solutions to our customers problems. This of course put pressure on sales team as revenues needed to expand at the same rate as new staff costs. No problems there then as our sales drive took us further and further afield not just encompassing local business advertising needs but moving into the national market where we now encompass the complete advertising needs for numerous companies around the county.
The next stage in our tale bring the resignation of Richard Preston who sold most of business interests at that time on order to create new companies in new areas of the motor trade, Richard sold most of his shares but still retains a small holding as he still wants to be associated with Image Red although not in the same capacity.
This has left just the two of the original share holders and directors, Lee Collins and Micheal Gibbin to drive the business forward and making sure that our customers receive the best possible service at the most competitive rate.
The next stage of tale brings us to the housing market collapse and the devastating effects for business were felt right across the business sectors, Companies that did not stay sensible in the good times started to collapse when the bad times hit, Image Red have always had good disaster recovery plans in place and we found ourselves in a strong position when the collapse happened as we still are today, because of our diversity we have seen drops in some areas as companies do not want to spend as much (understandably) and increases in others as value for money becomes a core concern of of large enterprises and Imagered have always provided great quality products at a great value price (the saying here goes an honest days work for an honest days pay). This motto has allowed us to compete for and win large scale contracts against our much larger rivals who in our opinion massively overcharge for thier services (after all the board cant keep thier membership at the top golf clubs unless they can pay them selves large wages at the customers expense). Neither myself or Lee play golf so there are no issues here then.
Our product range for the police forces has moved on as well, we now supply a number of products for different areas of the police forces all encompassing identification requirements based around crime. Please see our software development section of the web site to see more about this
http://softwaredevelopment.imagered.co.uk/ To round up then I would again like to thank all of customers and heres to the next 10 years when I will write another piece like this one (what, you cant wait did I hear you say).
Regards
Mick Gibbin
Technical Director (has now ditched the snow board and carries a family, they say it comes to all).