FEATURE


MADE IN THE EAST MIDLANDS


GEV Windpower is an independent repairer of wind turbine blades


Duo have the power to tackle range of business challenges


Back in 1997, when Nottingham-born Jason Watkins and Chris Gibson sat down to discuss the idea of selling football shirts over the internet, they could never have imagined that they were laying the foundations for a £100m internet business. Both had started their working relationship selling Artificial Intelligence software in the early nineties. By the mid-nineties both were operating at the forefront


of ecommerce technology, having led the development of a ground-breaking online bank, Egg.com, the UK’s first internet-only bank, while working for Derby-based Hughes Rae. Hughes Rae Commerce was created as a new


ecommerce division. Within 18 months the group was sold in a multi-million-pound deal and Jason and Chris left to focus on their new venture, Kitbag.com. “Back then, the systems, processes and functionality in


ecommerce platforms like Magento and Shopify simply didn’t exist, so we had to build from scratch,” recalls Jason. “As challenges around currency and


payments, warehousing, stock control, deliveries, purchasing and front-end functionality presented themselves, new software processes had to be designed and implemented.” It was this process that enabled them


to piece together the elements required to build a scalable business. This single piece of work has proved invaluable to both of them when relating to their future challenges in business. KitBag.com went onto employ over 100


people in Long Eaton, providing a white- labelled online retail facility for some of the


56 business network December 2018/January 2019 Jason Watkins (left) and Chris Gibson


most famous sporting brands and clubs in the World. F.C. Barcelona, Real Madrid, Juventus, Manchester United, F1.com, The Tour de France, NFL, Wimbledon, Umbro and Reebok were a few of their clients. “It was an exciting time and very satisfying to


create jobs for local people, although the pressure it comes with and the responsibility of meeting a rapidly growing payroll felt a little overwhelming at times,” recounts Chris. Chris and Jason went their separate ways in 2001, with Chris staying on as


Managing Director while Jason built another


ecommerce technology company that developed one of the UK’s first SaaS (software as a service) ecommerce platforms, which he sold in 2008. In 2014 Jason was approached by a friend running a maintenance business who was encountering a few technical challenges. Jason soon found himself white-boarding another technology solution.


‘F.C. Barcelona, Real Madrid, Juventus, Manchester United, F1.com, The Tour de France, NFL, Wimbledon, Umbro and Reebok were a few of their clients’


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