In 2000, friends Harry Chemko and Mark Williams built Elastic Path Software initially as a web services company. The timing couldn't have been worse, as it was right in the midst of the dot-com bust when many high tech companies were closing their doors. Harry and Mark persevered with only a small $15,000 loan from a government agency.

Elastic Path was receiving more and more requests for ecommerce engagements. Clients demanded custom ecommerce solutions because they weren't able to find what they needed anywhere on the market. Ecommerce software packages sold by large vendors required a significant investment and a long lead time. Many enterprises were frustrated with these options and were forced to build in house, which required ecommerce and expertise development resources they either did not have or could not afford to source from their own under resourced teams. Elastic Path recognized this gap in the market and set out to build an ecommerce platform that would provide enterprises with unprecedented flexibility and control.

It's the source code

Elastic Path Software provides a Java-based ecommerce platform for the easiest and most cost-effective way to deliver custom ecommerce solutions. Enterprises can benefit from the best of both worlds–the rich out-of-the-box features of a packaged solution as well as the full development environment to build in house. The Elastic Path platform was built using the best of open source technologies such as Spring, SOLR, Lucene, Eclipse, and OpenJPA. This technology stack helped speed up developer ramp up time, lower development costs, and made it easier to find IT resources.

Elastic Path believed in providing customers with the ultimate flexibility and control. What better way than providing full access to source code? This would make it easier and faster for internal IT teams to extend, customize, integrate to the unique requirements of their business users. Finally there was an ecommerce platform that was developer friendly–source code, out-of-the-box features, APIs, integration tools, full development environment, and a developer community.

More than just a platform

Elastic Path evolved from a web services business to developing an ecommerce platform because we stayed customer-focused. It's this customer-centric approach that led us to discover additional needs from our customer base. We had clients such as the Vancouver 2010 Olympics that needed full outsourcing and other clients such as Symantec that wanted the ability to build in house. Clients differed in how they wanted to approach their ecommerce business depending on their in-house resources and core competencies. In addition to an innovative ecommerce platform, Elastic Path also offers hosting, full outsourcing, and professional services to our clients. Now Elastic Path provides one ecommerce platform, three different models, and the consulting acumen to help clients achieve success with their ecommerce business.

Elastic Path is the only vendor to give you the choice to move between ecommerce models...at any time. We don't box you into any one model because we understand that businesses evolve.

Explosive growth

The commitment to providing customers with flexibility and control seemed to resonate with the market. Elastic Path has grown organically without any outside capital, earning it a spot on the PROFIT 100 ranking of Canada's Fastest-growing Companies for two consecutive years. Today Elastic Path has a client base of more than 200 customers worldwide and more than 100 employees at offices in Reading, UK and Vancouver, Canada. Interested in joining our team? Learn more about our corporate culture.

Enabling ecommerce success one post at a time

Elastic Path is also home to the world's #1 ecommerce blog (getelastic.com) with more than 15,000 subscribers. The Getelastic blog provides best practices and trends in ecommerce and is maintained by ecommerce analyst Linda Bustos. Getelastic was listed on the AdAge Power 150 blog list (ranks the top media and market blogs on the Internet) and described as one of the 15 entrepreneur blogs worth reading by the Wall Street Journal.