Once upon a time, back in October 2002, David decided on a Monday morning to walk out of his responsible job leading the industry’s largest independent distributor, without another job to go to.

 

Quickly realising he better produce a plan to pay the bills; off he went to buy a mobile phone. At this point David also realised that he couldn’t type, so it was going to be a steep learning curve on using a computer!  David then approached Jason, Ella and a few other important players with this crazy idea of leaving secure jobs to start our own company. Then, 20 years ago in November 2002, Dynamic Image Ltd was incorporated at Companies House.

 

This was followed with lots of night shifts looking for a unique idea that industry had never seen before, but no-one in the team was exactly sure what that may be!  Initially, the business needed to temporarily be a distributor as this is what we knew and bills needed to be paid. But, the plan right from the beginning was that we would not be a long-term distributor, we wanted to be an innovator within the trade. (The distributor side of the business was sold two years later for us to fully focus on services to the trade.)

 

January 2003 was upon us and we started trading, and downstairs of the house was filled with desks, people to sit at them and a couple of dogs.

 

Over weeks and months we worked to create and build the business. The unique idea that had emerged was to replace the many catalogues that distributors used to source products; using a thing called the ‘internet’ – which at the time was still in its infancy!  Many more months were spent designing the concept, writing a business plan and headhunting talented people to join the team. Learning the technology, the idea was to become the industry’s first ever trade sourcing portal. A year later, Sourcing City was born.

 

Since the exciting journey started, the team has grown with everyone playing their valuable part in the ongoing company history.

 

Fast forward 20 years to January 2023, lots has happened; we have just launched version 6 of Sourcing City, Promotional Office is the industry’s leading software, and in conjunction with BPMA, Merchandise World goes from strength to strength.

 

As we celebrate our 20th Birthday we are grateful to everyone who has been part of our journey and for the great support we have received from across the industry.

 

Published on: January 31st, 2023