Hatimeria

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the head of E-Commerce for an Austrian based fashion apparel retailer focused on children’s apparel and shoes.

What challenge were you trying to address with Hatimeria?

Originally, they built our website on Magento 1 from scratch, and everything was fine. So we needed help with the relaunch of our Magento 2 website that a previous provider messed up.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Hatimeria took over the site from the other agency, and they built on that. They helped us get the site running because we were really in trouble regarding the performance after the relaunch and the site speed was down. The product page took more than a minute to reload because the other agency underestimated the project in terms of performance and our stock numbers — that is when Hatimeria took over.

They also worked on the connection to our ERP system, and we asked them to do the frontend because it was also insufficient with the other agency. We asked them to optimize existing features, build new features, and work on page speed optimization.

Overall, their team did the back- and frontend development for our Magento 2 site. It has been full service around its framework, and we also are starting to build an app with them right now.

What is the team composition?

There have been around 12 people from their side; we're in direct contact with their CEO, and for technical development, it is the CTO plus his team who are back- and frontend developers and QA experts. In addition to that, we've also worked with a UX designer.

How did you come to work with Hatimeria?

We had an intermediary who recommended Hatimeria to us. After switching to the other agency, we were glad to get back to them. We contacted them, negotiated a new deal, and then started working together again.

How much have you invested in them?

We've spent around €1 million (approximately $1.08 million USD) with them so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started to work on this project in March 2021, and the engagement is ongoing.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

The quality increase on our site was insane; our investors were happy that we moved back to Hatimeria because we had a really basic website, and now we have an efficient E-Commerce functional site. Overall, the feedback has been great, and we're relieved that we did the switch to Hatimeria because we are 100% happy with them.

How did Hatimeria perform from a project management standpoint?

Project management has been great. They are generally transparent with their communication, which was another issue we had with the previous agency. We had to reschedule the relaunch date, and all the release dates over and over again. With Hatimeria, they have always met the expectations.

They deliver on point and have a good ratio between the used hours and the features' outcome.

In terms of communication, we use Slack, Jira, and Google Meets to provide feedback.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The most impressive thing is that they feel like part of our company. We have transparent communication from both sides, and it feels like they want us to succeed — it isn’t like working with an agency but with a remote IT department from your company.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don't think there's anything they can improve on — we like working with them and are very happy with the results and how we work together.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If you communicate transparently, you will get the most out of them. With Hatimeria, it feels like they are part of the company because, if there is an emergency, a developer is always ready to work out of office hours to get it fixed.

Overall, you'll get an agency that is 100% feeling and living in your company.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the president and lead architect of a consulting firm that mainly deals with Magento development and AWS architecture services. We’re based in Salt Lake City, Utah. 

What challenge were you trying to address with Hatimeria?

We needed Hatimeria’s Magento and mobile development services.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Our collaboration with Hatimeria is focused on staff augmentation. They serve as my development resources for third-party clients. For our projects, we give them a set of requirements, and then we have a technical kickoff meeting. A developer is then assigned to the project. 

I’m also building my own app, so they also help with that; my app is both on mobile and desktop platforms, and it’s made using React Native. The team has used existing documentation and code since my app has already been partially built. They’ve also integrated with my ticketing system. 

We’ve also had an e-commerce project. Their technical lead has put together a proposal for the issues we’re trying to solve. We’ve implemented their technical lead’s recommendations using a combination of their team and our team. 

What is the team composition?

I work with frontend developers, a project manager, and a technical lead for custom development. For e-commerce projects, we have a technical lead who oversees the Magento developers; I serve as the project manager in these projects. 

How did you come to work with Hatimeria?

I found Hatimeria back in 2010 when I was working for a different company. We needed an external development team to develop a number of features that we were building. I found their profile on Upwork, and we used them through that platform for a little while. Then, 2–3 years later, we ended up with a one-on-one agreement. Over the years, I brought them on board everywhere I worked, including on this project. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent between $50,000–$200,000 on their work. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in July 2010, and the engagement is ongoing. 

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

The number of years we’ve been working with Hatimeria speaks louder than any kind of metric. My consulting company has grown around five times with their help over the last four years, and we’re able to take on more projects.

How did Hatimeria perform from a project management standpoint?

Hatimeria has done well in terms of project management. I don’t experience problems any time I need to know what they’re doing or when they’re available. In terms of project timelines, they’re always upfront about their estimates and whether or not they can deliver on time. The team communicates well when they think things have become too complicated and they need more time. 

Overall, Hatimeria is highly transparent, which is important when it comes to project management. Simply put, their team isn’t overly structured but highly functional. In terms of tools, we use Jira and Confluence for documentation. We also use Slack for communication, along with GitHub and Bitbucket. We also use AWS CodeCommit. Meanwhile, their team uses Mavenlink for invoices and time-tracking. Sometimes, we also use Google Meet. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their technical abilities and the quality of their solutions are impressive. They have top-notch developers so I never have to worry about code quality. Because of that, I’ve tried to use as much of their time for my projects as possible — their owner even jokes that I want to take over his company. 

Apart from that, their transparency is also great. They’re always open about their work and abilities, and that’s truly beneficial for us. They’re not taking advantage of anyone; they’re simply trying to do good work. In fact, they turn me down when I bring projects that aren’t in their specialty. 

This goes a long way in an industry where many companies tell clients they can do everything when, in reality, all they have is one person who does a couple of things. Overall, I truly value their honesty and transparency about their abilities. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

They can step up their communication style. I’ve worked with other companies that do a better job communicating more often about how things are going. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Start the conversation and let your engagement with Hatimeria happen — it’s quite easy to deal with them. 

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of e-commerce for Graduation Source, an online retailer of graduation caps, gowns, and tassels. We work directly with colleges, universities, high schools, middle schools, and elementary schools nationwide. We also have a fair share of the international customer base.

What challenge were you trying to address with Hatimeria?

Our organization used an e-commerce framework that was extremely challenging. It was an outstanding platform, but it was difficult to bring a sense of strong customization to it. As a result, our development efforts required a group of developers who were willing to be challenged. We also had a bunch of unique requirements that weren’t available as out-of-the-box functionality on the platform, so Hatimeria also worked on accomplishing those requirements. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

We had a blended approach at the start of the engagement. Hatimeria was an industry expert, and they brought a tremendous amount of recommendations to the table. They also advised us on how to set ourselves up for scalability. Simply put, they made sure we had all our ducks in a row. Meanwhile, we also had a wishlist of requirements and issues that our customers faced when using our e-commerce property. Given that, we put their suggestions and our list together into a development roadmap. 

At present, Hatimeria maintains our entire e-commerce infrastructure. They manage our servers, keep patches up to date, and continuously develop the infrastructure on the Magento 2 platform. The team also does all of our QA and deployment processes. Overall, they serve as a full-service development agency that manages our infrastructure and develops our platform. In terms of technologies, we use the Magento 2 framework, which involves PHP, JavaScript, and CSS, among others. 

What is the team composition?

We’ve interfaced with 11–12 people from Hatimeria, including their CTO, who oversees the technical aspects of the engagement. A handful of Magento developers jump in from time to time. We also work with a project manager; we have a backup manager in case the main project manager isn’t around. Their QA team handles QA tests after developers release updates. 

Meanwhile, we also have direct communication with Bartosz (CEO & Co-Founder). When we’ve gone through the chain of command and we can’t accomplish something, we ask him to look into it. That way, he helps us figure the problem out with a fresh set of eyes. He’s the sounding board that helps us get to where we want to be. 

How did you come to work with Hatimeria?

I went on UpWork with a unique requirement for an interesting Magento customization project. I documented it myself, and I was looking for a strong developer who could build it for me. Hatimeria was one of the companies that signed up for it. That was how I learned about them and their work. After that, they took on the project and brought it to a level that I didn’t think was possible. Eventually, I convinced our company to let Hatimeria take over all of our development initiatives.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $130,000 on their services. This year alone, we’ve already invested between $75,000–$80,000. The budget goes up and down as we go through big projects, switch to maintenance, and go through the next big one. 

What is the status of this engagement?

They worked on their first project with us in February 2018. Then, we went into a full contract with them in November 2020, and the partnership is ongoing. 

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

Hatimeria has increased our conversion rate by 1%–2%; we’ve also grown our revenue last year by $210,000, which is even higher than our revenue before the COVID-19 pandemic. This growth has a direct correlation to the enhancements they’ve made to the website. 

As far as the quality of their work goes, we maintain everything through a code repository, which can be viewed publicly. Given that, our checks and balances are done by outside developers other than Hatimeria. They look at the code and tell us that it’s written beautifully, validating Hatimeria’s quality of work. 

Overall, numbers don’t lie. The website’s faster than it’s ever been before, and our sales have gone up. The platform is more user-friendly now, and we don’t encounter bugs, which is important. On top of that, Hatimeria is willing to accept the challenges we give, and they do things properly. 

How did Hatimeria perform from a project management standpoint?

Hatimeria’s project management is as straightforward as it can get. Everything has a strict development workflow. First, tickets are created. Then, we plan which ones are pushed to the development roadmap. Hatimeria then proceeds with their development process. After that, they go into QA mode with their team, which then leads into the QA process in our team. When we sign off on QA, we go to the deployment process. We also have a post-deployment QA test.  

The project management and development cycle are done through Jira, but Hatimeria also utilizes Slack; there’s a group chat for everybody involved in the project. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

The Hatimeria team is passionate about the project, and this isn’t just a job for them. Every time I talk to them, I feel that they're passionate about the success of the organization and our e-commerce site. It doesn’t feel like we’re hiring a company just to work for us; it feels like they’re our internal employees. Simply put, they have the expertise for the project, and they’re passionate about it. 

Moreover, they’re so good that I treat them like a hidden gem: I almost don’t want to tell anybody else about them. It’s been heartbreaking to let go of our internal development team, but hiring Hatimeria to replace them has been the best decision I’ve made for our e-commerce environment. Their expertise dwarfs anything I’ve ever seen in my 10 years in the Magento ecosystem. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, there aren’t any. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Hatimeria is based in Poland, and if your organization is in the US, you may fear outsourcing to an overseas company. If you’re not familiar with it, it can be scary, especially during the first couple of times. With that in mind, my advice is to take the leap of faith with Hatimeria — it’s going to make a major difference for you. On top of that, be ready to adjust your schedule. They’re six hours ahead; you’ll have to get up earlier in the morning so you can communicate with them.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m an outsourcing manager and a technical team lead for a Magento agency. We provide e-commerce solutions in the Austrian market.

What challenge were you trying to address with Hatimeria?

We needed extra resources. As there weren’t many experienced Magento developers in Austria, we decided to start an external collaboration.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Hatimeria develops Magento shops for our B2B clients. Their team supports front- and backend development. On an ongoing basis, they work on new projects and develop additional features for existing ones.

What is the team composition?

We work with one frontend and three backend developers from Hatimeria. On business subjects, I communicate with their CEO.

How did you come to work with Hatimeria?

I found Hatimeria because their team was active in the Polish Magento and open-source communities.

How much have you invested with them?

In 2020, we spent around €150,000 (approximately $179,000 USD) on their services. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Hatimeria in May 2019 and recently extended our contract with them. We’ll continue our collaboration for at least another year.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

When working with two of Hatimeria’s best developers, they complete projects much faster than estimated. They also provide a great software architect.

How did Hatimeria perform from a project management standpoint?

We have regular video calls and communicate via Slack. We don’t engage their project managers because I manage the projects.

Hatimeria’s resources integrated with our team. They even have email accounts from our domain, so their team’s almost 100% integrated with us.

What did you find most impressive about them?

When we had to change the resource plan, Hatimeria was helpful and flexible with rescheduling tasks. They’re a flexible team that twice rescued our projects.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We’re in Austria but also have German customers. It would be helpful if a few of their developers learned German as it would allow them to better integrate into the German market. That’s the only point of improvement.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

I would recommend Hatimeria to anyone looking for development resources.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the VP of the project management office for an organization that provides large e-commerce solutions. 

What challenge were you trying to address with Hatimeria?

We hired them to work on several projects over the past few years through staff augmentation. A few members of their development team have integrated with ours to assist with various technologies and platforms. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

For a third-party client, they worked with us on a large e-commerce build that leveraged headless implementation. We decoupled the frontend presentation layout from the e-commerce experience, so we used several of their team members for the project.

They essentially became a part of our team in the process. We co-developed the million-dollar implementation that supported 20 different currencies and locations for sites around the world. Their developers had experience with React.js, which we were using to create the frontend experience. 

What is the team composition?

We worked with a solutions architect as well as several frontend developers and QA testers. Their solutions architect collaborated with our solutions architect to design the solution together. 

How did you come to work with Hatimeria?

One of our technical leads worked with them prior to joining our organization. When we needed extra developers, he recommended their team to us. Our first project with them was a smaller project. As more projects came in, we began leveraging their various resources. 

How much have you invested with them?

Over the course of that project, we invested about $500,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together on this project from about January 2019–May 2020.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

The ultimate success of the project was we were able to deliver the product on time and on budget. That success was due largely to the help we received from their team. They had great communication skills, were solutions-oriented, and ran thorough QA to ensure our client’s satisfaction. 

How did Hatimeria perform from a project management standpoint?

Our project manager ran the project, so their team wasn’t responsible for that level of organization. However, they were excellent communicators, attending daily scrum meetings, contributing to all of our sprints, and were completely embedded in the project. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their experience with technology was very advanced, very knowledgeable and ahead-of-the-curve when it came to headless implementation. We were impressed with their skillsets, engineers, and solutions architects. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

They were very proactive and always striving to improve their services, so we didn’t feel that they ever feel short on delivery or communication. I appreciated their desire to deliver quality work and ask for feedback on a continuous basis. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Align your project with their skillsets. They had a lot of experience with some of the newer frontend technologies. Additionally, it’s helpful to set expectations for planning resources at the start of the project. Make sure your requests for their hours and services are clear.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the product manager at The Rake, a luxury lifestyle magazine. We’re a worldwide e-commerce website.  

What challenge were you trying to address with Hatimeria?

We needed someone to develop our e-commerce website in order to sell our backend to brands that are willing to start their own e-commerce platforms.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They developed our e-commerce website. They used Magento 2 and WordPress for the editorial and e-commerce content. They keep everything up and working fine. The website has simple stuff like field setting options to marketing solutions and more specific analytical options for us to better understand how the business is going. The website took about two months.

They also developed our iOS app which was a nice achievement because we needed to make it in a very short time.

What is the team composition?

There are three people and we’re about to get another frontend developer from them.

How did you come to work with Hatimeria?

The managing director of my company was friends with the managing director of their company.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in Q1 2016 and the work is ongoing.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

I’m really satisfied with their work. They’re very precise. They come up with new ideas and solutions to improve our business. They see things that we don’t since we don’t have the requisite tech background.

How did Hatimeria perform from a project management standpoint?

We use Jira and Kanban boards. Sometimes we switch to a sprint methodology if we have a very short delivery date. We can easily keep track of everything. They’re very communicative. We talk pretty much every day on Skype.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Whenever we have a problem, it’s easy for them to develop everything. They have many clients but it’s not an issue when we need them.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could increase their hours to have faster development.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

You can trust them. They provide the best solution.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the co-founder of a startup. We have a marketplace website where users can interact directly with each other.

What challenges were you trying to address with Hatimeria?

We hired them to design and implement our website platform.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We worked on some of the UX design ourselves and gave them a sense of what we wanted. Their team did coding for the front- and backend. It’s a progressive website app. We used three services that are directly connected to each other. They used PHP for the backend, and the skeleton of the application is based on Symfony 3.4 and uses Doctrine PHP libraries. 

What is the team composition?

We worked with a couple of program managers, and we also interacted with several people working on the front- and backend. 

How did you come to work with Hatimeria?

I found them through Upwork a few years ago. I spoke to their Swiss representative. We had started working with another company, but it wasn’t working out which is why I reached out to Hatimeria. 

How much have you invested in them?

We’ve invested about €220,000 (approximately $259,279 USD). 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in December 2017, and the work is ongoing. 

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

I don’t have any quantitative metrics to share. However, we did beta testing in a local market in Switzerland. We redesigned a lot of the website based on the feedback we received from that experience. 

How did Hatimeria perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re well-structured and have good tracking systems available to keep the project organized and remain transparent. Overall, deadlines were met. 

What did you find most impressive about them? 

They’re structure and workflows are impressive. It keeps things from getting lost during the project. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

Occasionally, we ran into the same issue more than once and had to have them fix it again. However, at the same time, there are a lot of moving parts. 

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the e-commerce and performance manager for Bedre Nӕtter. We sell affordable luxury beds to customers in four countries.

What challenge were you trying to address with Hatimeria?

We were running a Magento 1 solution. Like many others, we tried to save money by finding freelancers and ended up with a solution that was low quality.

Then Magento 2 came out, and we realized Magento 1 would no longer be supported. We needed to find someone to migrate our website and improve it overall.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They migrated our website from Magento 1 to Magento 2. They also handled the backend with our hosting company. We chose to continue working with them after that for some basic e-commerce functionality improvements. They also made some API connections as well. As a result of their work, we now have an order tracking system. 

They’ve been involved in two or three complete makeovers of our design as well. They’ve also been involved with all kinds of projects like connecting the website to our customer service software. We all speak with the same REST API. We had another agency that was local that handled our photoshop files, and Hatimeria handled the frontend and backend development.

What is the team composition?

We have a small team within Hatimeria that consists of a project leader, a frontend developer, and two backend developers. 

How did you come to work with Hatimeria?

Hatimeria reached out to us, and it was perfect timing, so we ended up going with them. We didn’t do much of our own research. 

Naturally, we get a lot of inquiries about doing our development and handling our case and we usually say no. Due to the timing, we said yes to having a chat with Hatimeria and the chemistry was pretty good, and they understood our case. They sounded competent and turned out to be as well.

How much have you invested in them?

We invested around $500,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

I think we began working with them in late 2017 for the initial project. We are still in touch with them.

The initial project was three months and then we moved onto adding new features and doing maintenance.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

We have a functional website, and we’re satisfied with what they delivered. We were happy that they go through several layers before deploying anything to confirm with the QA team.

How did Hatimeria perform from a project management standpoint?

They’ve been good in regards to project management, and there haven’t been any issues. They handle what we give them and prioritize what we tell them to do. We use Atlassian for project management.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their ability to understand the issues we had was impressive. We just gave them a general overview of what we wanted for the functionality of the site. They’re also pretty good at distributing the tasks out to the team.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, not that I can recall.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

They’re good at being proactive and getting the answers for themselves. I think you need a dedicated person within your organization to control what you provide them and act as a liaison.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Sexy Dresses is a retail, B2C women’s apparel website. We mostly sell our products in the U.S., but also ship globally on a limited basis. We’ve been around for four years.

What challenge were you trying to address with Hatimeria?

We had a couple of developers in-house who built the website initially. They did the basic Magento install and we updated it ourselves. After we grew, though, there was a higher demand to update the site a lot faster, as well as to accommodate the changes and demands of SEO. We needed more help.

What was the scope of their involvement?

One of the technologies in our stack that they helped with was Magento. Their involvement was mostly in frontend development and backend interaction with the in-house processes, as well as with external marketing with customers. They also provided some support.

Some projects were outside Magento, but they spawned from it. For example, they helped us do an improved Magento search, but it was more of an outside solution because we utilized Elasticsearch instead. Our need for Magento initiated the project, but we sometimes built outside solutions.

What is the team composition?

I have a lead developer who works on projects in-house and interacts with Hatimeria’s team. The team is comprised of 1–3 people depending on our budget and needs. There is usually someone in charge that dissects the overall plan and delegates it to other developers on the team.

How did you come to work with Hatimeria?

We worked with some people from traditional freelance platforms like Freelancer and Odesk. Having in-house development ourselves, we know the language and code. We know when somebody knows the code or not by the questions we ask. Hatimeria knew the code very well, and we work with them well because they understand why we do things.

They understood why we needed to create this kind of solution from a business perspective. It’s not just an engineer creating a solution, but rather engineers that understand how the solution will affect the business. This helps a lot because when we want to implement tools such as site search, Hatimeria understands the goal and how the end user will utilize it.

What is the status of this engagement?

They started working with us three or four years ago. The relationship is ongoing.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

We’ve gone through quite a few development teams and have experienced language barriers with many of them. It’s hard to get past it. Although Hatimeria is from Poland, I’ve never felt the language barrier to be an issue at all.

The biggest benefit to offshore development firms is understanding the culture of our customers. We develop things in a certain way that’s geared towards specific customers, and some development firms don’t always align with that. They understand that we’re creating solutions for business, and not just for fun.

How did Hatimeria perform from a project management standpoint?

The way we developed was fairly lean. Our projects mainly take one day, and we decide immediately whether to cancel or move forward. They always deliver the next iteration. Sometimes delivery is only comprised of potential barriers they’ve discovered.

We use Slack, so the lead doesn’t hide anything from others. We all discuss it. It’s a very open team.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I understand the code, so I also understand the interaction between the developers. The people on top also do coding, which is a big plus. Everybody is involved, and coding is what they live for. There’s not much bureaucracy. They all enjoy it.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could improve the amount of time it takes to onboard new developers as they grow. There have been slight delays in this area because we’ve had to familiarize people with what we’re doing. For the most part, though, they’ve executed on that very well.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the CEO of eyerim. We are an authorized retailer of designer eyewear. We are currently active in 17 countries within the European Union, with the primary focus and strongest market being the CEE [Central and Eastern Europe], Balkans as well as the Nordics.

What challenge were you trying to address with Hatimeria?

We reached out to them at the inception of the company to build out our website.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They were used to working with more established companies with a bigger budget. We reached out to them at the very beginning, and they were one of our first business partners. We are an e-commerce platform, which means they built everything we have completely from scratch.

We wanted to build an e-commerce portal that would be built from the very beginning with the aim of rapid growth and unlimited expansion in the view. We asked them to build a platform that would be based on a centralized rolling database, which supports an unlimited amount of customized localized frontend. This is how our platform works currently. There is a centralized Magento-based solution with 17 localized and language-translated websites throughout Europe running on that. We started with that and, along the way, they helped us to build the entire backend of the company. We are running a custom-made ERP solution to administer our warehouse, which was also built from scratch according to our requirements by Hatimeria. As it usually is with IT projects, it is a constantly evolving platform with a huge amount of tickets that are constantly in the queue. We started with a minimum viable product, and throughout the 3 years, we have built it to what we have right now which is a complete solution from the frontend to the backend, to warehouse administration, as well as collection through the accounting system.

What is the team composition?

The number of developers was constantly changing. To begin with, we decided to put something online, and there was a team of 3–4 people working on the project, and then it grew or decreased depending on whether we were in the season or not and the scope of the cooperation. The constant and stable core team dedicated to eyerim is usually 3–4 people. But, there are always more people involved on an ad hoc basis depending on whether we want to do. For example, with hardware configuration, as well as throughout the summer when our budget was crossing more than €30,000 per month, we had up to 6–7 people at a time at certain points.

How did you come to work with Hatimeria?

From the very beginning, we wanted to build our website with Magento. It was the only open source platform available out there for us because we knew we were going to build a huge addition with several hundred thousand SKUs. We liked them because they are a company that specializes in Magento as well as e-commerce. It was a perfect match for us. We also opted for them due to the structure of their team as they have a frontend Magento expert, backend Magento expert, and a core Magento configurator expert to integrate payment gateways, checkout system, etc.

We initially wanted to build our own in-house team of developers. I reached out to senior Magento developers through oDesk, which is how I found Bartosz Zakreta [CEO, Hatimeria], and we agreed on the cooperation.

How much have you invested in them?

We have spent approximately €500,000 on the website over the last 3 years.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working together in January of 2015, and the work is ongoing. I don’t foresee stopping working with them in the near future because our companies are interconnected and very dependent, and they have full knowledge of our project.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

We receive very positive feedback from our day-to-day users. Even though they are unaware of what is going on in the backend, they appreciate the speed and the simplistic design of the website that we have built. When it comes to experts, we are also getting positive reviews of the website as well. Our Google support team is very happy when it comes to conversions.

During our last fundraising route that we closed in August of this year, part of the due diligence process was a technical due diligence. The person in charge was Filip Kopecky, who is the CTO of ZOOT, one of CEE's biggest e-commerce players, and he approved everything. His feedback was very positive, and he even mentioned in his letter to shareholders that some of the features he found on our website were very inspiring to him.

How did Hatimeria perform from a project management standpoint?

We have regular Skype calls 3–4 times per week, and at the moment we also have a dedicated team of 3 developers who work on eyerim. The day-to-day management of the project is pretty standard. We work with JIRA, and the communication regarding individual tickets happens within that tool. The weekly calls that we have are more about priorities such as budgeting, ticketing, and strategy aligning IT with the mission of our business.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We have a really good personal connection with Bartosz, and especially with Michal Wujas, the other co-founder. I really appreciate how they do things and how they built up the company. I like their company culture. The biggest upside and what I like is that they are an IT company specializing only in Magento and in e-commerce, which is exactly what we need.

From the very beginning of the cooperation, I wanted them and their development team to feel as if the project was their own. If we had a ticket that didn’t make sense, we want them to give us feedback and push back. The idea of the cooperation is that we are building it together and they take care of the website as if it is their own.

I also appreciate their proactive response to a new patch, or a newer version of Magento, or new technology out there. They are always proactive when it comes to security. I really like their push toward elasticity, page speed, and load speed performance, in addition to the general services they provide when it comes to administering, hosting, or monitoring the server performance as well as downtimes, and sending proactive reports, updates and so on.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Their biggest improvement was when our project grew big enough for them to assign a team leader with a senior developer available at all times.

This review was updated by the client on February 4th, 2020. The original star ratings were: Overall – 4.5, Quality – 5, Schedule – 4.5, Cost – 4.5, NPS – 5. New content is below.

What was the scope of their involvement?

The project has expanded since the last review but continues to move in the same direction. We made the backend even stronger by making it a stand-alone solution as opposed to a tool embedded within a Magento system. We’re also in the process of replacing the entire frontend solution from scratch and turning it into a mobile-first website that'sPWA-based (progressive web app).

What is the team composition?

We still have the same level of trust and mutual liking with the company’s co-founders. We still work with the same lead developer Patryk (Magento Team Leader / Senior Developer, Hatimeria), but the people who do ad-hoc development on the front- and backend sometimes change.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent nearly €1 million (approximately $1.08 million USD).

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

We’re still seeing positive feedback.