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CompanyIndependent & long-term aligned

Built for the long term. Structured to reward the people behind the work.

iWeb is an independently owned business. The way the company is structured is designed around continuity, retaining senior expertise, and rewarding the people who do the work over the long term. For clients, that means the same names on the work, year after year.

01
The arc

31 years on one subject. Independently, throughout.

The shortest version of the iWeb story is that the company has worked on enterprise commerce since before commerce had a name for itself. The longer version is how it stayed independent, retained the senior team, and kept the same people close to the work along the way.

Six moments in the chronology.

1995
Founded
iWeb begins in Stafford as a six-person studio building catalogues for industrial wholesalers. The founding bet, that commerce would matter for serious businesses and not only for consumer brands, has shaped every decision since.
2007
Adobe partner
A specialism crystallises. We become an early Magento partner. It turns out to be the platform that does the most for the kind of company we'd already chosen to work with: mid-market, operationally complex, long horizons.
2014
Senior weighting
A deliberate decision: the firm will be weighted towards architects and principals, not pyramid-staffed. A 1:1 ratio of seniors to seniors becomes the working principle. Eleven years later, average engineer tenure is over a decade.
2019
A different succession question
The founders begin a long conversation about what should happen to the company over the next decade. The priorities are clear from the start: continuity for clients, independence for the firm, and a structure that keeps senior people close to the work.
2022
A longer-term structure
A formal shift toward a longer-term ownership and reward structure, designed around continuity, independence, and retaining senior expertise. No outside investor. No change of plan in week two.
Today
Year four
Projects that began in 2014 are still being delivered by the same architects. The senior team is steady. The structure does its quiet work in the background, and the next decade is the one being planned for.
02
Why the structure

The decision was about how the work gets done, not how it gets sold.

The aim was a business that could keep doing the work it is good at, with the people who are good at it, on the timeframe enterprise commerce actually runs on. Continuity, independence, and long-horizon decision making were the priorities. The structure was chosen to support them.

01
Continuity over change for its own sake
The people who built the relationships still hold them. The architect who learned a client's ERP in 2016 is still here to use that knowledge in 2026.
02
Independence as a working condition
Remaining independent means decisions are made on the timeframe the work needs, not on a timeframe set elsewhere. The company answers to the people doing the work and the clients it serves.
03
Quality compounds when no one is in a hurry
There is no integration plan and no short-term margin target. The firm can plan in five-year increments because that is the horizon the work asks for.
04
A retention story written into the structure
Senior people stay because of how the company is built, not what it shouts about. Structure does the quiet work that compensation alone never quite manages.
03
How the structure shapes the work

Six working rules. The quiet output of a long-term aligned business.

Not values on a wall, and not a culture statement. These are the working rules that follow from a firm structured for continuity. They all bend towards the same thing: getting the next ten years right.

01
We staff to capacity, not aspiration
No project we cannot resource is sold. The people who would be asked to deliver it are the same people who would carry the cost of getting it wrong.
02
We say no, in writing, more than most
A meaningful share of briefs ends with a written "we don't think you should do this", sometimes with a recommendation to a smaller specialist. The cost of saying no is low. The cost of saying yes to the wrong thing is not.
03
Continuity, not coverage
Projects carry the same principal engineer and architect for their lifetime. The hand-off pattern that runs most agencies, delivery team and then a separate support team, doesn't exist here. The build team is the support team.
04
Senior people stay close to the work
The architects and principals scoping the work are the same people answering questions about it three and five years in. Seniority is not a sales function here.
05
Measured growth
The metric reviewed most often is average client tenure. The firm grows when the work and the team are ready for it, not because a plan elsewhere says it should.
06
Long-term accountability
Decisions made now have the same architects standing behind them in a decade. The team responsible for a build is the team still answering for it at the year-five review.
04
What this means for clients

Three things clients tend to notice. None of them are on the website by accident.

The shape of the company is, on most days, an internal detail. On the days it matters most, when a project is renegotiating its third year, when a platform decision needs a ten-year view, when something has gone wrong, it shows up in the answer.

01

Continuity is prioritised

The firm is structured for durability rather than short-term extraction. The shape of the company is designed so the people on the work today are still on it in three and five years time.

02

The same names, year on year

Continuity is structural. The architects who scoped your project in 2024 are the architects you'll hear from again in 2029. Average tenure sits at eleven years because the structure rewards staying.

03

Recommendations weighted toward your long-term interest

The team making a recommendation has a stake in being right about it in five years, not in selling more of it this quarter. The advice tends to be unusually direct as a result.

05
In their words

Two colleagues. One from before the transfer, one from after.

We didn't run a survey. We asked two people to write a paragraph in their own time. Both did, and neither needed an edit.

01 · Tom
"I joined iWeb in 2016, six years before the EOT. What changed in 2022 wasn't the work, it was who I was working for. The architect I am to a client now is the same architect I'll be in 2030, with no acquirer in between. That isn't a soft thing. It changes what I'm willing to say in a steering group."
Tom
Head of Development · joined 2016
02 · Harleen
"I came in 2020, knowing the company was employee-owned. What surprised me was how visible it is from the inside. The P&L is on the wall every quarter. The trustee meeting minutes are published. You stop thinking about the company as a thing that happens to you and start thinking about it as a thing you're in."
Harleen
Senior Lead Developer · joined 2020
Accreditations & assurance
Gold Commerce Partner
Specialised in Commerce & AI
ISO certified
27001 · 9001 · 42001
Cyber Essentials Plus
Independently verified security
WCAG 2.2 AA
Accessibility embedded by design
Employee-owned
The same team, long term
Next step

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