Our Baby Comes of Age
The all new website launch
Back in 2011 we had the idea of building a website where specifiers like ourselves could download manufacturers digital content. We came up with a totally new concept, bimstore
Our idea was that the content would be of a consistently high quality. We knew it had to be free because specifiers do not like to pay for stuff! The model would be that manufacturers would pay a small fee to host their components on our site. We set to work building a website to do exactly this. In April 2011 bimstore.co.uk went live. We had built some content ourselves such as Velux rooflights and iPads. We then started talking to manufacturers about the potential and attracting specifiers toward the site.
Initially progress was slow with only early adopters having any interest at all. Then in October 2011 the UK Government mandated all projects had to use BIM by 2016. This legitimised what we were doing and we have not looked back since.
Now the site hosts components for over 50 manufacturers with many more in production. In total over 300,000 objects have been downloaded and we are getting 30,000 downloads per month. We have a community of over 30,000 users.
With this growth we thought we should build a new site with infrastructure appropriate to our future plans. Over the last 6 months we have rebuilt a brand new site. It has all of the original functionality but with much firmer foundations for the future.
There are several new features which will benefit the manufacturers and specifiers. Our BIMbox concept allows specifiers to have their very own library of components. By using BIMbox the specifier will be automatically informed when a product has been updated.
We have also built in a social networking function to allow users to follow manufacturers and for them to be kept informed of product updates or changes.
There are many more improvements on the new site with plans for more in the next release.
Our baby has come of age in 2014. We hope you enjoy the improvements we have made.