Deity in Eindhoven wants to make webshops more efficient and attractive.

In the hip renovated old Philips factory TQ at Strijp T, the software company Deity and Jamie Maria Schouren (29) fit in perfectly. Deity is a trendy company where talented IT people feel at home. "We try to make our people feel comfortable. Games, good lunches, and spontaneous activities. We even have our own hair salon where our office manager, who is also a hairdresser, cuts the hair of our people and their family members."

Schouren is from Maastricht, but since her education in Industrial Design at the TU/e, she feels completely like a resident of Eindhoven. "Already during my studies, I worked at companies such as Any Lamp (Lamp Direct, ed.) as responsible for the technology. Even then, I saw the challenges faced by a rapidly growing online store."

Pool development team with IT professionals
An important role is played by the Polish city of Krakow in Schouren's career. "Already at Any Lamp, we set up a development team with IT professionals. I used to go to Krakow monthly and worked with well-educated and talented IT professionals. When I started my own business in 2016, they joined me to work as service providers for webshops."
A year later, Schouren met Roland Bastiaansen (46), who became her business partner. "He has a lot of experience in the IT giant Docdata, which he co-founded. He worked there with big players in the e-commerce industry, including Zalando, Ferrari, and de Bijenkorf. We saw great opportunities together if we could make that software available for small and medium-sized enterprises. That's why we merged our companies and complemented each other well. We have a total of 26 employees in the Netherlands and Poland."

Specialist in the field of webshops
Meanwhile, Schouren positioned himself as a specialist in the field of webshops. "During lectures around the world, my message is that webshops do not need to be renewed with every innovation. Keep what you have and what you have sometimes invested millions in, and use extensions to expand functionality."
According to Schouren, the webshop is moving towards the mobile phone. "In the past, we made a website suitable for mobile phones, nowadays we design for the small screen. In addition, webshops are increasingly working through Instagram, Facebook, or major sites like Amazon or Bol.com. Another new development is creating buying moments. For example, being alerted to a bargain via the screen of your car when you are near the store."

Determining the trend.
This is how Schouren and her partner try to influence the trend in webshops. They offer a software package for a good webshop based on open source. "That means it's free; but it was our best move ever. Within a year, 85,000 webshops worldwide had downloaded our program and started using it. They come to us for support and to improve and beautify the functionality with extensions. That is our business model."
At the American software giant Big Commerce, Deity had not gone unnoticed, says Schouren. "They want to enter the European market and we can support them with our products. They also sell our products to their customers. We want to continue to be innovative, but we don't necessarily need to grow in terms of the number of employees. The door is always open for talent, but we don't run campaigns to recruit them. If we continue to do fun things with this team in this beautiful environment, our revenue will grow anyway."

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