Our Story
Storbie was founded in 2007, under the name Smallfish, by a group of enterprising New Zealanders, who wanted to empower others with the tools required to run an online shop, in a simple and cost effective way.
The Spark
The idea came from the founder, Shane, who by nature of being a ‘geek’ began getting requests from various friends, and friends of friends, to build them an online shop. Shane, a Principal Consultant at Microsoft, realised that unless you are a geek, know a geek, or have buckets of spare cash lying around, creating an ecommerce website and, harder still, finding customers, was a bit of a hurdle. He imagined an ecommerce system that anyone could use to create and maintain their own stand-alone store, supported by a network of marketplaces that exposed those stores to an ever-increasing pool of interested customers.
Lift Off
Coinciding with this moment of inspiration was Shane’s recent friendship with a designer. It didn’t take long for Shane to convince Tim, and shortly thereafter a team of other capable individuals, to dive in and put countless hours of work into shaping a new user-friendly software product.
Smallfish was launched, a brand designed to connect with the small business and cottage industry. However larger businesses began using Smallfish as well, appreciating the Smallfish store builder’s simplicity and ease of use. To support them, Smallfish transformed into a system capable of supporting stores with thousands of products and large numbers of orders, while still remaining super-easy to use. And with an influx of overseas enquiries, a global opportunity awaited.
Welcome Storbie
A rebrand was required to better align with the evolved product and to help launch the new global platform. Storbie was born and it was farewell to our funky little fish.
Storbie’s mission is to change online retail for the better by enabling more and more businesses to get online, get selling, and get connected, thereby helping them to flourish and thrive.
We are committed to continually building and improving our product and helping to make your business successful.