20 Years of Designstor: The Beginning

In September, 2020, my company Designstor turned 20 years old. None of this was planned; in fact, if things had really worked out, we would have followed the path of successful tech startups and either scaled or sold. This is the story of how my company started and why we are what we are today.

Background

I studied architecture at the University of Waterloo during the 90’s. I was not a good designer and struggled with… well, many of the things related to studying to be an architect. I was, however, quite good at physical model building and had some talents in visual presentation. In 1996 I heard of a possible co-op job at a small startup company that was doing architectural renderings called Q Studio. I knew almost nothing about computer rendering (or computers, for that matter), but the job sounded amazing so I taught myself some 3D modeling and rendering in 3D Studio (the DOS version) and scraped together some renderings and a nice-looking portfolio. I managed to convince the owner of the company that I knew what I was doing (in fact, I didn’t and he knew it) and I got the job for an 8 month period. I stayed there for 3 1/2 years and never went back to architecture school.

How it started

I loved rendering but had another idea for something related to dealing with digital images. In my job, I spent a lot of time searching for old files, responding to clients that wanted copies of their renderings and just generally needing a way to organize everything visually so I could find it and make use of it later. This is now commonplace and is known as Digital Asset Management (DAM), but there didn’t seem to be many options at the time and I became obsessed with the idea that I could build something that would do this for me. That idea - a digital archive management system - became the starting point for Designstor.

In early 2000 I started planning how to make Designstor and the system I thought it could be. This was Dotcom 1.0 and I readily admit to being swept up in the excitement and potential of the time (if you were around then you might see some scary similarities now). I pitched the idea to my uncle, who happened to live across the street from me and was a recent MBA graduate. We decided it was worth pursuing so we set off to try and make it happen. In September, 2000, after doing a lot of planning, brainstorming and capital raising from family and friends (I’m so sorry!), we incorporated. We were officially a startup.

For the next year and a half, we developed the idea of Designstor as a web-based digital archive management system. We brought on a developer as a partner, built a system running on open-source platforms, brought on some beta testers in the Toronto design industry and did our best to make this thing come to life. Our platform was to cater to the content-heavy design industry (“Design”) and be a way to access all of that content at any time, using a visually-based system and a vast network of storage (“Stor”). We added the tagline “Your designs live here” that seemed like the icing on the cake. I personally thought it was the best idea ever and I imagined that every design company on the planet would want a part of it. 

Turns out, I was really wrong! 

Pivot

Designstor as an online archive management system failed. It failed for a number of reasons, not the least of which was my incredible ignorance about what it takes to make a successful tech company. At the same time, I needed a way to pay rent and some architects were asking me if I’d like to do any renderings. I did, and it was enjoyable as well as being lucrative at the time. We decided to pivot (before pivoting was a thing!), focus on doing architectural renderings and keep the name Designstor because, well, it still sounded OK and it would cost money to change corporate documents. 

“We’ve got a great name, we’ve got a great team, we’ve got a great logo, and we’ve got a great name. Now we just need an idea. Let’s pivot. Let’s pivot!”

Since then, Designstor has been through a lot of ups and downs, worked with many amazing architects, designers, developers and agencies, and managed to survive a global economic meltdown, a few technical disasters and a lot of questionable decisions, among other things. I’ve spent most of my days thinking about architectural images, how they’re made, and how to make them better, something that to this day still seems slightly elusive. 

Mostly, though, I’ve become really good at explaining our name. My instructions usually go like this: “Designstor. The word “design” then s-t-o-r dot com. That’s right, there’s no “e” on the end. Why no “e”? Well, that’s kind of a funny story…”