About us | History
The history of the web agency Angry Creative
This is the story of the biggest WordPress and WooCommerce web agency based in Europe.
Angry Creative is the premium digital agency choice within WooCommerce and WordPress. Here are some of the milestones we passed on the journey to where we are today.
2005
E-commerce from the student corridor
Our Founder Jimmy Rosén expanded the otherwise relatively poor student fund by starting E-commerce from his student corridor. Jimmy bought the remaining stock cheaply and sold them in his shop. The investment died out when large assets (warehousing, logistics, etc.) were required, and the student corridor was no longer sufficient.
2006
Jimmy falls for WordPress
Jimmy helps friends and acquaintances with their websites and blogs. Through a tip from a friend, Jimmy is introduced to WordPress, a simple blog and CMS tool that could be turned into an excellent publishing system for websites with a little ingenuity.
2007
Angry Creative is founded
After his e-commerce venture, Jimmy realized that he was good at business development and digital marketing. He decided to use his knowledge in addition to his studies to help corporate customers succeed and look good on the Internet. All said and done, Angry Creative was founded, and WordPress became the publishing tool Jimmy advocated.
2009
Angry Creative becomes Jimmy’s full-time job
After completing his studies, Jimmy graduated right in a rampant recession. Jimmy spat in his fist and decided to invest in Angry Creative. Jimmy set a sales goal and told himself that if he got there, he would continue, and if not, it would be to move from Norrköping and look for a “regular” job because in Norrköping there were very few web jobs.
2010
Mission: Accomplished!
Angry Creative reaches its sales target on a set budget and therefore the journey continues with Angry Creative.
First office
The company moves to Norra Promenaden, together with Kafit AB, a small IT company that worked with IP telephony, support, and other IT solutions.
2011
Angry Creative is starting to hire
The recession has led companies to look at more cost-effective alternatives to proprietary publishing systems and this makes Angry Creative flourish. After landing its first major project, Angry Creative started hiring.
Office relocation
Since it was time to hire, it was also an office move. The company is moving into premises on Gamla rådstugugatan in Norrköping. Fifty-five square meters all to ourselves!
2012
We organize our first meetup
We organize our first WordPress meetup with great success. About 150 people come to us in Norrköping and talk about WordPress. Very fun and successful!
We start with WordPress management
We see that almost no other web agency that works with WordPress thinks about the longer perspective. We are starting to design a management offer to always be best-in-class in our market.
2013
We are organizing our second meetup
After last year’s success, we are arranging another major meetup. About 120 people come to Norrköping this time and talk about WordPress.
We are named the young company of the year in Norrköping
The entrepreneurs in Norrköping name us the leading young company of the year in Norrköping. We thank and bow for the appointment!
We start working with WooCommerce
We are completing our first major WooCommerce assignment: A subscription service where you get a box of products at regular intervals.
2014
We organize our first WordCamp
We are organizing our first official WordCamp, which is an “official” industry meeting and must submit to the WordPress foundation’s regulations. About 170 people show up and talk about everything possible WordPress-related.
Office relocation
Angry Creative is now five people and with more on the way, and our 55 square meters are starting to feel very cramped. We, therefore, move to Bråddgatan 7. We wonder if we will ever be able to be so many that we fill up all 160 sqm we just got.
2015
We organize our second WordCamp
We are organizing our second official WordCamp, which is an “official” industry meeting, and must comply with the WordPress foundation’s regulations. About 150 people show up and talk about everything WordPress-related.
2016
WooCommerce silver partner
We become the first Swedish company to be able to call ourselves a WooCommerce partner.
We are divided into work teams
The company is growing, and it is no longer possible to gather everyone in one big team. We are starting to divide into smaller work teams to avoid unnecessary disruption.
We are starting to take responsibility for hosting
As our customers expect us to take overall responsibility for their application, we can no longer rely on the delivery of our hosting partners. Our sister company Synotio is formed and invests heavily in infrastructure. The amount of downtime decreases by 95%.
Office relocation
Angry Creative has now had time to become 12 employees with more on the way in, and it is starting to get very lively in our small room. We are therefore moving to new, larger premises at Bråddgatan 11 in Norrköping. We get 475 sqm of space to stretch our legs in. That should be enough, right?
2017
WooCommerce Gold Partner
We become the only Swedish company to be able to call ourselves a WooCommerce gold partner.
We are nominated for ambassador of the year in Norrköping
Together with Kolmården Zoo and the Bråvalla Festival, we are nominated as ambassadors of the year for Norrköping.
New office: Malmö
Angry Creative opens a branch in Malmö and starts hiring developers and holding community events here as well.
2018
We hire our first designer
After many years only working with development and selected design partners, we will have an in-house designer for the first time.
2019
We launch our first product
We are releasing our first product, Qala e-commerce. Qala is the collection of all our experiences from our e-commerce projects. It is a perfect starting point for an e-retailer who wants to scale his business to several markets, languages, and currencies – without having to make all the common mistakes.
Gazelle and Superföretag- for the second year in a row!
For the second year in a row, we are named both Gazelle Company by Dagens Industri and Super Company by Veckans Affärer. Fantastic fun!
2020
The corona pandemic affects everyone, including us
The pandemic is spreading around the world and everyone has to adapt, we are learning to become a more distributed company with remote work and staff in many different places. Nothing should stop us from doing an excellent job for our customers.
We are moving to new beautiful premises on Drottninggatan in Norrköping
We are growing so fast! With 34 employees in 475 sqm, space is no longer enough and we are moving to new nice beautiful premises on Drottninggatan in Norrköping. How long will 909 sqm last?
Angry Creative buys Pragmatic
We have barely made it through half the year and lots of exciting things are happening.
Angry Creative buys Pragmatic, one of the UK’s most well-known WordPress agencies.
During the year, Pragmatic will become Angry Creative UK. We preserve what’s great about Pragmatic and combine the best of both companies to create a larger, multinational WordPress and WooCommerce specialist.
From 30 to 60!
We started the year with a little over 30 people in the agency. With our own strong growth and with the purchase of Pragmatic (which was a little over 20 people), we grew to around 60 people.
We are joining WordPress VIP
With the purchase of Pragmatic, the percentage of customers who work primarily editorially and not only with e-commerce increases. WordPress VIP is Automattic’s high-traffic editorial WordPress platform, where only the top editorial WordPress agencies in the world are invited to join.
Gazell and Superföretag – for the third year in a row!
For the third year in a row, we have been named both a Gazelle company by Dagens Industri and a Super company by Veckans Affärer (highly acclaimed Swedish business awards). We are of course very happy about these awards.
We become a “real” company with rocket speed
The growth of the company creates all the normal functions that one imagines to be in a company, and they are now performed by dedicated departments.
During the year, we create a Management Group, an HR department, an International Finance department, and the first embryo of an International Marketing department.
2021
We are now a remote-first company
As the company gained a lot of new international customers during the year and we hire from the time zone UTC -+1h, we now dare to call ourselves a remote-first company.
During the year, we take the opportunity to organize ourselves in a way that significantly increases efficiency and reduces stress for each individual in the company. This was very necessary to prepare to be able to grow in the future – in 2021 the number of employees does not grow as our organization from <30 people were not compatible with an organization with >60 people.
We become a hybrid agency and increase the pace of innovation and customer value
In our new size, it is easier to identify trends among our customers. This means that we become more product-oriented even around details, and our rate of innovation increases significantly.
Briefly explained, the number of things we can reuse between customers increases, which increases the value we can deliver to each customer for every penny.
During the year, we productize, among other things, a solution for hyper-fast images (Qala Imgproxy), our solution for working with several markets in WooCommerce (Qala Multimarket), and more. Gutenberg will now become our default editor as we consider it matured enough for all customer projects.
Gazell and Superföretag – for the fourth year in a row!
For the fourth year in a row, we have been named both a Gazelle Company (now “Master Gazelle”) by Dagens Industri and Superföretag by Veckans Affärer (highly acclaimed Swedish business awards). We are of course very happy about these awards.
We are hiring an external CEO, Rustan Håkansson
We are hiring Rustan Håkansson, previously, among other things, COO at Nodeone (Scandinavia’s largest Drupal supplier) as external CEO.
Rustan has previously been hired as a consultant in batches since 2011 to improve operations, and now takes a leading role in helping shape the organization so that day-to-day operational work flows as smoothly as possible.
Our former CEO Jimmy Rosén instead focuses on our innovation work.
2022
Jimmy takes back the CEO role
We are changing our focus from growth and investing in our packaged WordPress and WooCommerce platform Qala.
With Qala, our operational efficiency increases in certain parts of our projects, while the value to customers increases significantly.
Our business model is changing from being more consultant-driven to being an organization with primarily senior employees with very long experience.