I’ll admit, it’s a bit of a poor show that we’ve not updated the blog in a while. That said, I think we have a couple of decent excuses for the lack of blog entries.
6 years old in November
As we approach November, like every November of previous years, we always like to remind everyone that it’s our birthday. S7 Media Limited incorporated back in November 2008, back when I’d just finished university, a young 20-something pretty eager to make nice-looking websites, design and print. My brother Scott, and me, have been running this family business ever since. November 2014 will be our sixth birthday, starting our seventh year in business.
Since 2008 we’ve seen off the recession, steadily grown, taking on lots of new clients and continuing to serve them. So I guess what I’m saying is that that’s my first excuse for not updating the blog so often, we’re incredibly busy making websites, blogs and other marketing materials work for our clients!
Expansion into Canada
We’ve also been up to something pretty spectacular on the other side of the pond. We’re having a go at establishing a presence in Canada. It’s a temporary presence for now, starting up in Toronto back in August. We’ll eventually move west to Vancouver.
I’ll be completely honest, I’ve had a fascination with the True North since I was a kid, so it’s a mixture of working hard and travelling around this beautiful expanse.
Canada is an interesting market, particularly the e-commerce aspect. Here’s some short and sweet statistics for you: based on 2012 figures (and e-commerce has grown incredibly since then), 20% of the UK population shopped online. In Canada, just 8%. The populations of these countries are approximately 65 million and 35 million respectively.
My guess would be that the issue with Canadian e-commerce growth being a bit slow is partly to do with the expanse of the country, being so spread out, and the majority of which being near the 49th parallel (the border with the US, of which their cousins south of the border embrace e-commerce far, far more). Many Canadians don’t enjoy the choice online like their American counterparts do, and so 25% of Canadians put up with importing from the United States, paying their import duty but enjoying a wider selection of goods.
That said, their mail services do seem to be finally catching up and larger companies like Amazon are expanding their presence here. As more competition is introduced in the mail delivery services and the e-commerce sector I strongly believe that there will be a huge increase in online shopping in Canada. Particularly for those that don’t live in the larger cities in the Windsor – Québec City corridor.
If you’re living in such cities as London, Waterloo/Kitchener, Mississauga, Toronto, Montréal and Ottawa, you’ll already enjoy a decent connection to the bigger companies and their distribution centres. I remember though, back in 2012, being in Vancouver (a sizeable city in the west), and ordering from Toronto, and it taking a week to arrive.
I think things are changing though and it’s interesting to be part of it.
Anyway, we promise to post more updates. In fact, we’ve been working on some pretty nice content management system websites, and a few online shops, which will be going live soon, so we’ll be sure to show them off.
And yes, I’m having an awesome time out here.