avEIGHT was established in March of 1997 as a clothing company
in West Philadelphia. Run by a close knit group of artist friends
avEIGHT began producing t-shirts soon after incorporation. Sean
Kernick developed the signature avEIGHT character style, recognizable
by the exaggerated feet, wings and mandatory backpack.
By late 1997 avEIGHT was becoming popular in the hip-hop community
for producing high quality, well designed clothing. avEIGHT
was the top selling Philadelphia clothing brand at the legendary
Bobbito's Footwork in downtown Philadelphia.
In early 1998 avEIGHT began looking to move its clothing line
to the web. Thus, avEIGHT.com version 1.0 was born. Version
1.0 was completely designed and coded by the dedicated staff
at avEIGHT. Both hosting and some mailing features were sub
contracted from other companies. The first version of the site
was purely informational. Pictures of the clothing could be
viewed along with a little bit of background information about
the company.
During 1998 and 1999 avEIGHT co-produced (with Cypher 9) a
series of events entitled Hip-Hop 101. These events changed
the face of hip-hop in Philadelphia by bringing together people
of different races to celebrate one culture, hip-hop culture.
Each event focused on one of the four main elements of hip-hop
culture: DJ'ing, rapping, break dancing and graffiti. Hip-Hop
101 was a huge success.
Now, avEIGHT was beginning to be recognized by the hip-hop
business community. Freelance graphic design work for local
artists became an important part of avEIGHT's work. At this
time Kevin Adamson-Jackes was the main flyer art designer.
Kevin created classic flyers for the likes of Gangstarr, Macy
Grey, The Roots, Prince Paul, M.O.P, D.I.T.C, and Kool Keith.
Soon larger corporations started to notice. avEIGHT's first
corporate clients were Philadelphia based non-profits. Projects
such as laying out books for Research
for Action and the Women's Community Revitalization Project
taught avEIGHT the basic principles of corporate design.
Around 2000, avEIGHT.com version 1.5 was constructed. This
site enabled avEIGHT to sell its clothing online via third
party proprietary software. Also, more of avEIGHT's portfolio
was available. The site was still hosted by an outside company.
At the end of the year avEIGHT moved from the houses of Micah
Gold-Markel and Kevin Adamson-Jackes to its current home
in the Phith Warehouse. Located in the Northern Liberties,
the Phith Warehouse was the culmination of a partnership between
avEIGHT and the legendary hip-hop entertainer Schoolly D. Malhlik
Seals headed construction of avEIGHT's new spacious offices.
After three years of constructing and maintaining its own
web site, as well as some small clients' sites, avEIGHT began
pursuing larger clients. The Philadelphia
Furniture & Furnishings Show and Coyopa
Productions were some of the first larger companies to
hire avEIGHT to do work on the web. Soon avEIGHT was concentrating
most of its time fulfilling web site design contract work.
2002 saw Rick Smith join avEIGHT as lead programmer. Rick
brought years of experience from the Rosenbluth International's
Information Technology department. Rick quickly began work on the avEIGHT internet
infrastructure. Within a year, Rick guided to completion
the writing of an open source shopping cart software suite
and construction of avEIGHT's web/mail servers.
avEIGHT relied on its network of small businesses for its
first hosting and shopping cart clients. Broken
Ground Inc. became the first business to realize the benefits
of avEIGHT's new services. Crucial
Creations followed. Incredibly
Edible Delites™ joined up shortly thereafter.
Soon avEIGHT.com 2.0 was born. This site ushered in a drastic
change to the avEIGHT business plan. avEIGHT.com became a portal
to all of the goods and services that avEIGHT offers. Each
major service/product avEIGHT offers received its own web site.
So, clothing became clothing.avEIGHT.com and the web services
department became webservices.avEIGHT.com. Both sites (and
the portal) utilize the shopping cart application built by
avEIGHT and are hosted
on the avEIGHT's servers.
avEIGHT continues to expand in the area of web-based services.
Our desktop support and technical consulting add a full-service
approach to the normally confusing and complicated realm of
computers. We will work with you
to find the level of involvement that works best for your organization.
It's
not
our site; it's
your site, and it should achieve your goals.
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