Our Story

Agencies Were Confusing

I found a niche drop shipping TV wall mounts on eBay. After expanding into furniture I needed my own online store, so reached out to several Magento agencies for help. The quotes ranged from 10k to 100k. I was left feeling confused and overwhelmed.

Freelancers a Headache

I hired a freelancer on Odesk (now Upwork) to build my Magento site and help with the Marketplaces. Soon I had what I thought was a great online store for a fraction of the agency quotes.

I hired more to help in other areas, but always had issues. They would log on late or not at all, have communication issues due to language and culture barriers, and caught a few milking the clock. In short I spent more time micromanaging than growing my business. Not to mention daily issues with Magento and a super low conversion rate. You get what you pay for.

Why the Philippines

I was always impressed with my Filipino freelancers. They worked hard, spoke perfect english, and I just got along with them. In 2012 I was approached with an offer to open an office just outside of Manila and hire an in house team to replace the freelancers. I was hesitant at first, but liked the proposal and knew I could never scale my business without making a change.

Always Open Commerce

The e-commerce business didn’t go as planned, but a contact had similar issues with freelancers and could not afford an agency. We did some work for them and they referred us to another client, which quickly led to another referral.

Before long I realized we were serving a far different niche and made the transition from selling products to selling services. Today we have over 50 clients from all over the world.

Steve Berke