US e-commerce platform BigCommerce is contributing to London’s growth in this sector as it sets up shop in the UK.
Despite concerns about Brexit, the UK remains the top tech hub in Europe for investors, with 80% of all money invested in the UK since 2016 coming from tech firms.
Having recently closed a $64 million investment round led by Goldman Sachs to accelerate BigCommerce’s international expansion, London was the company’s first choice for establishing a strong foothold in Europe.
BigCommerce powers B2B and B2C ecommerce for more than 50,000 SMBs, 2,000+ mid-market businesses, more than 25 Fortune 1000 companies, and industry-leading brands including Ben & Jerry’s, Paul Mitchell, Sony and Toyota. The plan is for BigCommerce London to employ up to 20 staff members by the summer of 2019.
The Europe HQ will provide local support to its impressive roster of UK based clients and to expand its reach across Europe. Current clients in the region include start-ups and established companies such as Awesome GTI, Kier Limited, Olive, clothing brands Yumi International, Physiq Apparel, Silly Socks, Trust Ford and Tabitha Simmons.
Brent Bellm, CEO of BigCommerce says: “We serve a growing, international community of retailers and we want to provide the best possible service to all our customers. Establishing a presence in Europe has long been an aspiration of ours, and this London office will allow us to deliver more tailored programmes to our customers and partners across Europe”.
BigCommerce is also increasingly attracting clients switching from Shopify and Magento to the platform, which is optimised for scaling up in a way that its competitors cannot do.
When Awesome GTI migrated from Magento to launch a B2B channel, they saw a 96% year on year revenue growth as they no longer had to spend time maintaining a system that was cumbersome and inefficient. They didn’t even consider Shopify because it seemed to them to be geared towards small-scale businesses.
Wayne Ainsworh, the ecommerce manager at Awesome GTI says: “We’d been with Magento for several years, but there came a point when we realised that the platform wasn’t optimised for what we were trying to do anymore. Plus we were never quite sure if that data from that system was 100% accurate. We needed a hosted platform that allowed us to focus on the marketing rather than being tied up with system maintenance. Switching to BigCommerce has helped us fundamentally change the way we do things online and has helped get us to where we are today.”
BigCommerce is the world’s leading cloud ecommerce platform for established and rapidly-growing businesses. Combining enterprise functionality, an open architecture and app ecosystem, and market-leading performance, BigCommerce enables businesses to grow online sales with 80% less cost, time and complexity than on-premise software.
With the opening of the London office, BigCommerce will have global offices in Europe, North America and Asia Pacific.