Ten years ago, Croatian Commercial Court published a statement that Inchoo is registered as a legal entity. Oh boy, it was an adventure since. That 2008 was very exciting for the eCommerce ecosystem. Recession was in the news all over the world. Many businesses started to optimise their costs and many merchants opened their online sales channels. On top of that, many new eCommerce businesses started to appear.
That was a year when Varien published Magento 1.0., which overtook leader position in chaotic eCommerce platform wars very soon. In the next few years, there were numerous online stores moving from osCommerce, ZenCart, CRE Loaded and other platforms to Magento.
Back to Inchoo. Here are some starting challenges company faced at the start:
- We wanted to be a full service eCommerce agency
- We didn’t have money
- We were located in a small town of 100.000 people without serious computer science university program at that time.
However, I had some eCommerce development experience working with platforms like osCommerce and CRE Loaded, I had some business development skills since Inchoo was my second company and I had huge willpower. It was time to define three pillars on top of which we will build a company. These are still active:
- eCommerce Focus – During all of these years, we got many inquiries to build different types of projects like portals, corporate sites and web applications. Since day 1, we focused only on eCommerce.
- Knowledge Sharing – “There were basically 2 forms of Magento resource back in 2008: Alan Storm and Inchoo”, Ben Marks at Meet Magento Croatia 2017 opening session. To become recognised on a global scale, we chose a strategy of knowledge sharing. Currently, our site has over 200.000 unique visits each month.
- Local Community Engagement – We knew that we need to play a role in building a local community. Our goal was to send a message to youngsters and attract them to the careers in software development. In order to do that, we were promoting self-education (since the regular university education is not enough) and startup culture. With this in mind, we were founders of a local association called Osijek Software City.
Here is the brief timeline of highlight moments.
Inchoo was founded
On this day Croatian Commercial Court sent a statement that Inchoo is a registered legal subject. At that time, we had no office and I was the only employee, working from home. Inchoo had a strong relationship with US company called Surgeworks and we built a few eCommerce projects together. First online store was not on Magento, but CRE Loaded – osCommerce fork that was very popular at that time.
May 7, 2008
First hire
Very soon, we made a first hire – Branko Ajzele. We were still both working from our homes and once a week we met at some coffee shops to coordinate activities.
August 1, 2008
First Magento project was launched
After many weeks of work, our 1st Magento project hit the Web: TeraFlex Suspensions. It was Magento & WordPress integration and these were quite popular and and in demand at that time.
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August 22, 2008
We moved to the first office
Working from home didn’t work out for us, but that was never a plan. We used the money we earned to rent a very small, one-room apartment with enough space for 4 people. That was our first office.
September 1, 2008
We moved to the second office
We were hiring fast these 2 months and our first office became small in just two months. So, we moved to the second office. This was a larger, three-room apartment.
December 1, 2008
End of first year.
We finished our first year with 6 employees: Tomislav Bilić, Branko Ajzele, Toni Aničić, Ivan Kalaica (iOS developer), Željko Prša and Ivan Weiler. I’m happy to say that half of them are still in the company.
End of 2008
First international conference
No, no. It was not a Magento event. We went to a great eCommerce conference called “Etrgovina“ which took place in Palić, Serbia.
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April, 2009
We moved to our 3rd office
Team expansion continued to this year, so it became apparent that we will need an even larger office, so we moved to the third one. We stayed in this one for many years.
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November 16, 2009
11 employees
We grew to 11 employees by the end of the year. Our website had over 200 articles which brought us over 250.000 visitors. We built a couple of Magento stores. Some of them had WordPress integrations.
End of 2009
First Inchooers Comic was published
For a few years, we tried to publish Magento comics called “The Inchooers”. The goal was to share some fun situations from our everyday work life with our Magento developers.
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January 25, 2010
First Middle East website
“We just sold another one!”, cried Dan Stuart after 25 people ordered “AED 50 for AED 100 Worth of Authentic Lebanese Cuisine at Mashawi” deal. Only few hours later the deal was sold 66 times.
June 03, 2010
First Magento conference
It was about time to attend our first Magento conference. Since it was in Mallorca, Spain, it was obvious we had a blast. We were featured with a talk by Branko “Clone Yourself: How to Effectively Share Magento Knowledge with New Developers”
October 10-12, 2010
Inchoo.net redesign (v3)
New design was introduced with the main objective to let the world know that we design at the same level of excellence as we code.
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January 10, 2011
30 employees!
By the end of the year, we had a team of 30 employees, working in 3 offices on 2 continents (Osijek, Novi Sad and Sydney).
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End of 2011
Osijek Software City movement started!
On this day, Inchoo took part in organising a meetup called “Grab an IT job“. This was a day when Osijek Software City movement was presented to the public. A year later, OSC became a non-profit association.
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February 23, 2012
First Imagine Conference
This was time when everyone talked about X.Commerce. Nobody actually knew what it was. Conference had an unclear direction, but it was great fun to be in Las Vegas.
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April, 2012.
2012 in review
31 employees, 1.526.498 site visits, 708.444 unique visitors, over 5000 followers on Twitter, over 2000 Facebook fans, 7 kids, 12 Magento certified developers.
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End of 2012
Sheeel.com wins best eCommerce website in Kuwait award!
When your client wins an award for the best eCommerce site in their country, that’s something remarkable. Sheeel.com, a daily deal website based in Kuwait, operating in several other countries, is about to receive the Kuwait e-Award from the Emir of Kuwait later this week. Read on for an interview with our client, Nasser Al-Sabah, talking about his business and experience of working with Inchoo.
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June 03, 2013
Visual Identity Redesign
It was about time to refresh our visual identity.
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September 19, 2013
Design team was formed
We hired Marko Brisevac, web designer and entrepreneur who joined Dino Balen in forming a design team at Inchoo. This was the first time Inchoo had more than one designer.
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February 10, 2014
First US talk
For the first time ever, Inchoo had a talk outside of Europe. We couldn’t imagine a better place for it then Meet Magento New York. Our Lead Frontend Developer, Hrvoje Jurišić talked about Responsive Web Design
September 22-23, 2014
Best SME in Eastern Croatia award
Inchoo won The Best SME in Eastern Croatia award on the final event of this year’s “Business Take Off” project organized and managed by national business newspaper and portal Poslovni dnevnik and Croatian Ministry of Entrepreneurship and Crafts.
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December 3, 2014
We became Google Partner!
Being a Google Partner means that the Partner company itself is strong enough and able to keep up with fast Google trends.
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October 30, 2015
We became Magento 2 Trained Solution Partner!
At that time, we had 11 Magento Certified Solution Specialists and 20 Magento Certified Developers on board. As our “mileage” grew, so did the number of people who got certified.
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November 10, 2015
Record conference attendance
Our ever expanding team has been all over the world – counting 9 international conferences and 26 Inchooers representing us. We even had 8 speakers spreading the word on the latest in the Magento community. Giving back to the community is something we always look forward to and continue to do every year.
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End of 2015
Magento Developers Paradise in Croatia
This was the biggest event we organised so far with 235 delegates. As you probably know by now, DevParadise is an annual conference of (Meet) Magento Association aimed specifically at Magento developers and this year it was organized by us and held in Opatija from April 25th – 28th. The idea is to have “Lots of code and fun in the sun” and we had plenty of it for sure.
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April 25-28, 2016
We moved to the new office. Finally!
Every one we had before was a place we enjoyed working in. This time around it was different. We have a place that inspires us. Not because it’s newer, shinier or bigger than every other we’ve been in. It’s because we’ve been working on this one for the last 7 months, like a team, approaching it as we would to any other project. Every person could, and was invited to, comment on the ideas we shared among ourselves. That’s what makes this office so great. Every detail is a team effort. Every room has its story. Every person roaming this space can say: Yes, this feels right. Like a place we enjoy working in.
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August, 2016
Meet Magento Croatia
After all the feedback we’ve received from #MM17HR delegates, we can proudly say that we are more than satisfied with first Meet Magento Croatia event. On March 17th and 18th, for the first time in Croatia, in Inchoo’s hometown Osijek, we were honored to welcome over 200 delegates from 18 countries and 5 continents!
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March 17-18, 2017
Inchoo wins The Golden Marten Award
After 9 years in business, Inchoo won The Golden Marten Award (Zlatna kuna), traditionally given to the most successful local companies by the Croatian Chamber of Economy. We received it as the best small company in Osijek-Baranja County.
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June, 2017
Inchoo is a Sylius Solution Partner
Magento 2 positioned itself higher on an SMB scale and this created some new gaps/needs in the market. Now, we’re working with three platforms: Magento and Sylius, and we feel that these are not direct competitors. Each one has a specific niche to fill.
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March 17-18, 2017
Thank you!
I would like to thank each of 57 Inchooers who are currently in the company but also those 50 to whom Inchoo was a passing station. All of you contributed and made this company what it is today.
Big thanks goes to all of our clients who trusted us. We think of you as our friends and hope that we will bring you further success.
Thank you, Magento! Although we are not very happy where the platform is going now, you surely play very important role in our growth.
And thank you all of our friends and supporters who were following us all these years. We hope we will inspire and amuse you in the years to come.
