How we’ve grown, and the future of Patchworks

Last year, we announced that we had received £3.3m in investment from Gresham House Ventures (GHV), a growth equity investor specialising in software and digitally driven businesses.

We wanted to use that money to supercharge Patchworks’ growth; to build even further on our current success and make our name known in the world of ecommerce software.

It feels like an eternity now since the pandemic reshaped all aspects of our lives and it’s been one hell of a ride. In fact, the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns fundamentally changed how we do business. In an effort to ensure the welfare of our staff, we went fully and permanently remote, with no detriment to our success.

We then listened to employee feedback and decided to invest in working spaces across the UK and abroad. Like we said - the past two years have been a real rollercoaster. But our success is a testament to our culture of agility and innovation.

As we move forward into a post-pandemic world, the investment we’ve received will play an important role in defining our strategy and operation.

Our investment journey

Before we made any decisions on how we implemented our new funding, we broke our operation down into a few components. What does Patchworks aim to achieve? How do we want to help our clients?

Here’s what it comes down to.

• We want to empower our clients and partners to focus on scaling up their business. That includes having an integrated tech stack which provides growth opportunities, and helps them realise their vision.
• We want to ensure companies don’t have to redirect resources away from their core business processes. That involves providing the freedom to connect their chosen platform with any others they desire, whether that’s through a headless approach or an established ecommerce platform.
• We want to enable agencies to widen their offer to clients. That includes recommending best-of-breed software, to allow both agency and client to achieve their business goals.
• We want to ensure partners, software vendors, and merchants stay front of mind, allowing them to connect with legacy softwares or emerging tech.

Patchworks was established as an integration provider, but with investment, we’re dedicated to becoming something more than that in order to exceed these aims.

Alongside integrations, we’re also committed to providing software solutions to address the challenges many ecommerce companies face. In September, we released our own business analytics tool Patchworks BI which allows companies to accurately monitor KPIs in real-time through a user friendly but comprehensive dashboard.

We’ve also released Stockr, a software solution for ecommerce companies with multiple websites. It allows them to unify their stock pool so when something sells out, it’s quickly reflected in other stores and stock can be diverted to the site which needs it most.

And with the release of our brand new Patchworks integration platform, we’re empowering businesses to take control of their own connections with self-service features and flexible and accessible pricing.

Without the £3.3m investment from GHV, our ability to develop and update these innovations would have been severely limited. And we’re already getting rave reviews from our clients and partners with how much our new tools are empowering their growth.

What the future has in store

One of our most important company values centres around innovation; meaning we’re always asking questions to drive product development.

And while we’re filled to the brim with ideas and new ways of doing things, turning things from the initial conceptualisation stage to a realised service takes a lot of time, money, and staff.

We don’t see the investment as a one-off payment; by using the money to improve our services and support capabilities, we’ve been able to boost our success and generate even more revenue. With that expected growth, there’s a few things we plan to do.

Expand the Patchworks team: We’re always looking to bring more Patchworkers on board, and now we’ve got the resources to do so. There wouldn’t be a business without our talented team and we’re dedicated to driving that people-led approach into the future.

Explore new ideas and products: It’s a lot easier to take a risk when you’re backed up with a larger, skilled team and more funding. That’s why, as we grow, we’re excited to start new projects such as our upcoming low code/no code platform allowing developers and agencies to get stuck in and create powerful integrations themselves.

Continue supporting our clients and partners: We put customer service at the heart of everything we do. And while we already offer top of the line service, investing back into the business lets us resolve tickets even faster and identify problems sooner.

Empower companies to choose best of breed: Every company deserves to have the freedom to choose the path they want to take. But for many, their platforms and current integrations can’t support a best of breed approach. We want to change that, so everything you implement into your tech stack is software to be proud of.

We’re also looking to expand our headless ecommerce offer to clients, and become a trusted MACH enabler. We love a challenge and helping people move away from legacy platforms allows all parties involved to take a flexible approach to ecommerce and their tech stack.

We’re always evolving

We might have a strategy laid out for the future, but that doesn’t mean we’re not always setting our sights on new things.

Ingenuity brings investment, as we’ve found through the funding granted by GHV. Patchworks is never content to sit around and let things come to us; we ask questions, innovate, and develop so there’s constantly a pipeline of new products and services to offer clients and partners.

If you’d like a free consultation about any of the services Patchworks offer, get in touch through our website and speak to a member of our team. Connections matter to us, so we’re excited to help out any new faces looking to supercharge their ecommerce performance.