Sourcing City is Ten Years Old

Sourcing City is celebrating ten years of trading, having been founded in November 2002 and commencing full trading in January 2003.  In the past ten years a lot has happened!

Dynamic Image Ltd, known in the trade as Sourcing City, have become synonymous with continually creating unique trade services and events which had never been seen before in the UK promotional merchandise industry. The company now has a portfolio of market leading & established brands within the Promotional Merchandise Marketplace, and each service is specifically designed to grow and enhance the business of their trade distributor and supplier customer companies. 

Today, Sourcing City are the market leader in the provision of specialist online digital and mobile trade services and networking trade events to the promotional merchandise industry.

David Long, Founder & Chairman said; “It has been a fantastic journey so far. It is exciting being involved in such an innovative and dynamic business. It is constantly motivating to work with a great team, and building excellent relationships with so many companies across the trade. The world has changed more than ever in the past ten years, so it is hard to predict what additional services we will be providing in ten years’ time; it is quite likely that the technology we will be providing hasn’t even been invented yet!”

The founding team had significant past experience as major distributors in the promotional merchandise industry before moving to become a 'Trade Hub' providing services and connections to both distributors and suppliers within the industry. Jason Grenham and Ella Long were in the original team, and continue to play key roles today. The other key members of the founding team, Brian Bent, Stephen Smith and Richard Belcher returned to the distributor world when the company moved to become exclusively trade.  Today, all are now customers of Sourcing City and remain close to the company they helped to launch.

The company's founder and executive chairman David Long, had his early management career in the blue-chip corporate arena and holds a DMS and DipM. He joined Dowlis Group as managing director in 1990 and led the team to grow the company from around £1m to £12.5m turnover over 12 years, firmly establishing the company as the largest independent promotional merchandise distributor in the UK. In 2003 David founded Dynamic Image Ltd as a Promotional Merchandise Distributor, which grew to £1.6m, before being sold three years later to focus on services to the trade. In 2005 Sourcing City was launched as the first and only online trade sourcing service in Europe.

David was also chairman of Promota for a number of years, during which time the membership grew to its peak of 1000 trade company members, the organisations name was changed from BAGDA to Promota, The Promota Show was established as the industry's leading trade event, and a new competing show was successfully defeated by the unification of the members. In 2007, Promota presented David with the 'Roger Saunders Award' for outstanding services to the industry. In 2011 David was presented the Hampshire Life Recognition Award for his community services.

Alistair Mylchreest (CEO) joined the industry in 2006, and is now an established and highly respected industry figure. Alistair had a background in senior management within the banking industry and was responsible for the launch of new initiatives including Sourcing Planet, Sourcing Directory, Promotional Directory, SC Events and Promotional Office. He passionately leads the company’s team of dedicated, knowledgeable, experienced and friendly industry professionals to continually greater heights.

Sourcing City has become renowned for innovation, and were the first to launch an online trade sourcing service in Europe. The company also launched the world's first trade sourcing App and created the industry's first appointment based national VIP Networking Event in SC Marketplace in 2011. The launch of SC LIVE!, a trade exhibition exclusively for professional distributors, took place in 2013 to high acclaim. In the same year the company launched Promotional Office, a cutting edge, fast and comprehensive business management software to increase operational efficiencies for distributors and suppliers.

The Sourcing City distributor customers collectively represent over 50% of the entire UK promotional merchandise market spend and the majority of UK industry suppliers are customers of the company’s services.

Sourcing City were also founder members of the PromoAlliance alongside ASI & PSI the leading trade organisations in the USA and Germany.

Based at The Hub in Farnborough, the Sourcing City team includes many faces known and respected throughout the trade, and they pride themselves on their reputation and for setting standards for customer service and technological product innovation to benefit the industry. 

Share this page