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Once upon a time, there was a shop called The Poole Discount Centre. Various items were sold there, including Dylon Dyes. This shop had no website or email facilities. Despite having literally thousands of different product lines, it did not even have a computer.
A computer was finally purchased in 1995, and although huge amounts of work was done to record details of what was actually in stock and where it was going, those doing the ordering appeared oblivious to this information and continued to buy in vast quantities of unwanted, overpriced tat.
Finally recognising a problem of warehouses bursting at the seams, someone in their wisdom decided that opening another shop two doors away to sell various overpriced ceramic pots would be a good idea.
It wasn't.
Late 1996, a small website was created for this establishment. It had a few pages with listings of a small number of products. There was no online purchasing facility. The site did not even have it's own domain name.
The Internet had fewer than 1 million websites, and most people had not even heard of it, never mind actually having access to it. 28k dial up and pay-per-minute were the order of the day.
The second shop opened in January 1997, and suprisingly sales were brisk. Until that is, April arrived when sales crashed and burned. Probably because all of the semi-decent merchandise had been sold, and what was left clearly wouldn't have sold even if it was being given away to the most desparate shoppers in the known universe.
However in other news, the small website obtained its own domain name. The site was also redesigned, this time with summary pages of products, as updating the details manually had become error prone and time consuming.
The second shop closed at the end of 1997, and there was much rejoicing.
Several site redesigns later, and by mid-1998 the site now had a searchable listing of stock. This was based on a simple text file extracted from the main stock database and uploaded to the site once a week. Useless by today's standards but far better than static pages. This continued until 1999, when those responsible for the overpriced tat were disposed of, the main website was given searchable product categories and Chaffinch.com was switched on for the first time.
The first Chaffinch site only had a few products, as at the time it used 'off the shelf' software which was entirely separate from the main stock database. Dylon Dyes were a popular item from the start. Other items were trialled, but most of these were either unpopular or were discontinued for various other reasons.
The Poole Discount Centre closed at the end of 2001, as sales had fallen sharply and crime had increased exponentially. Several other large retailers nearby had already left, making way for a certain national chain which prides itself on selling overpriced merchandise under the guise of bargains.
Online ordering was suspended at the end of December 2001. What was left of the previous retail business ended up at a new, much smaller location. The website was intended to re-open in April 2002, but the software previously used was now over 3 years old, and upgrading it or using ready-made alternatives were deemed unsuitable. An entirely new system was required, and after months of development, the site was available again at the end of November 2002. The first customer placed their order on 13 December 2002.
Over the next three years, sales at the site increased, and sales at the retail outlet decreased. By September 2005, the majority of sales were generated via this website. The retail outlet was closed as it no longer served any useful purpose.
Today, over 10 years after that first site, the Internet has over 100 million websites, a majority of people have access via broadband and billions are spent online every year in the UK alone.
We have served thousands of satisfied customers, and will continue to do so.