The eCommerce specialized company, which has been focused on investigating, developing and exceeding expectations, is turning 10 years old on August 1. Check out this overview of its history since its beginnings.
By the middle of 2009, four young and creative entrepreneurs brought their ideas and skills together to give way to what we know today as Fizzmod, a company whose leitmotiv has always been to create groundbreaking solutions for eCommerce.
These youths were very different from each other, starting by their nationalities, cultures and interests, and even their professions. However, they managed to form an ideal team to give birth to what, at that time, seemed to be a very ambitious project: an agency that could provide a comprehensive service –from beginning to end- to clients who would embark on online sales which, back then, was timidly emerging in South America as an alternative to traditional physical stores.
The name of the company came up in relation to the creative mixture among the first four business partners. The concept was to show something that differentiated and something that connected all the members of the team. That’s why the name arose as a blend between the two English words: Fizz and Mod. The first word refers to the fizziness, to that mix of cultures, opinions, musical and culinary tastes that were present at the beginning, and to the constant search for different ways to innovate.
The second word, Mod (“modernist”), conceals a rather emotional motive for the founders: it is about a movement originated in London in the late 50s, whose significant elements were connected to a cultural aspect which included hairstyles, tailor-made suits and jazz. The main references to this movement were the Beatles, with whom the creators of Fizzmod felt identified.
With a clearly defined name and aiming the international market, the team members started their activity as a partnership in a room of an apartment where one of the members used to live in the city of Buenos Aires. Their first works were focused on the American and Asian markets, with China as first commercial partner, using the eCommerce Magento platform. “We sold our projects through Craiglist and we worked for companies with multiple business units. We offered a complete service, from image and the development of the online channel to the logistic solutions and payment methods management”, says Francisco Mato, Fizzmod CEO.
When the projects started growing, the company had to rapidly increase their staff: So it was that the first contributor came in, remotely, working from La Rioja province in Argentina. And in 2010, Fizzmod opened their first office, a small studio in Palermo neighborhood, Buenos Aires, where they made the first additions to the active staff of the enterprise.
In 2012, they participated in Buenos Aires Emprende contest, organized by Buenos Aires City Government to encourage innovative ideas, and they won with a project for medical emergencies using Big Data, a hardly-known concept at that time.
This way, by always staying on the eCommerce track, Fizzmod was able to continue its growth, to innovate with state-of-the-art technologies and knowledge and constantly generate new investments. “Invest in ourselves was always our top priority”, mentions Lisandro Aubert, the company’s CTO.
One year later, through its commercial alliance with VTEX, the Brazilian digital commerce platform, Fizzmod succeeded in launching the online stores of well-known retail brands and participate for the first time in VTEX Day (2014) as an strategic partner of the said firm.
“We started with some small stores, though for well-known brands such as Sportline, Prestigio or Tonel Privado, and thanks to those consecutive cases of success we got our first big project: nothing less than Frávega, one of the most important retailers in Argentina”. From that moment, Fizzmod would start growing and expanding nonstop, until becoming the company as we know it today.
Over the past 10 years, the company received multiple prizes and recognition owing to their performance and the repercussion of their success cases. In 2014, Fizzmod was awarded as “Best eCommerce Agency” at the eCommerce Awards in Argentina and then obtained the same recognition at a Latin-American level, two years later in 2016, in addition to being recognized as the best eCommerce agency in Uruguay in 2015 and a finalist in several opportunities in the contests in Peru and Chile, among others.
In 2015, the agency also inaugurated new offices in Palermo as well as the first branch in Santiago de Chile, with a team of specialized professionals ready to meet the needs and requirements of diverse Latin-American markets. In 2017 and 2018, Fizzmod was ranked in VTEX magic quadrant as one of the best strategy partners at global level.
Their back office star product, JANIS, created in 2014, is considered the most powerful tool in the market as it allows to manage the whole operation of an eCommerce, from Cataloguing to SAC (Customer Service), going through the different processes of management and preparation of orders, quality control and logistics, offering full traceability of all transactions processed through the system.
By the end of 2018, Fizzmod decided to plant a flag on the European market, and after a few months they launched the first chain of supermarkets in Spain that works entirely through JANIS for all their operations. At the same time, the company naturally extended its scope to Central America, opening business operations in Panama and Honduras.
Earlier this year, the company opened new offices in Cordoba City, Argentina, seeking to empower their team with all the talent from the region. In the same context, #DesaFizzmod was launched. A totally free programming (Node.JS, React y JavaScript) training program delivered in different languages that provides job opportunities within the company. There were more than 800 applicants during the first two editions and some of them are now working for Fizzmod.
Along this path, Fizzmod turns 10 years of age, settling as an electronic commerce digital innovation company with an international footprint, working in more than 15 countries and constantly striving for new horizons… always.