Early History. Prior to 2003, the founders of Creativemark were firmly established within the software industry. In 1995 Chris Wiles had the idea of developing a suite of internet software to get computer users connected with the minimum of fuss. NetConnect, distributed by our European partners, Haage & Partner Computer GmbH, became a success both in the UK and European market, receiving numerous awards through the industry. STFax, again popular through UK and Europe, was award-winning fax and voice software that enabled the end-user to use their computer to send and receive faxes, plus turn their system in to an answer-machine through their modem.
2003. The launch of Creativemark as a small consultancy to provide new media services within the UK computer magazine industry. Our role was to forge relationships with various software developers so we could compile and publish CD-ROMs for distribution with computer magazines such as the now defunct Personal Computer World. By end of 2008, PCW magazine had 13 worldwide syndication partners for the disc (and only the disc) content, which was unheard of elsewhere within the industry. Using our expertise within the software market, we moved on to provide online services within the UK magazine industry and were the first to enable full application downloads through a magazine, Computeractive, rather than on the standard distribution media such as a CD or DVD.
Early 2009. We started developing our own technologies to enable us to work with partners to provide software by digital distribution, across the Internet. Although some of these technologies are still in development, the Software Store concept launched on the Incisive Media V3.co.uk and Computeractive websites, during October and November 2009, sitting on top of the Cleverbridge API.
2021. After twelve years, we’re still managing and hosting our Software Store concept along with our publishing partners, including IDG, Dennis Publishing, CHIP and Omsoc Publishing. We’ve since switched to FastSpring as our choice of partner powering the transactions for our store partners.