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FirstStore features a number of Stores and their Products on the home page and other areas of the site. This keeps pages looking fresh and adds increased exposure for our Store owners and their stock.

About Us

FirstStore

FirstStore is a collaboration between long term friends and business associates Richard George and Piers Taylor. They first met in 1999 when Richard, then Managing Director of Goss Interactive Ltd. employed Piers as a Senior Software Developer. They have since worked together on a number of occasions and FirstStore is their latest brainwave.

Richard George

Adventurous Devon-based entrepreneur Richard George is as passionate about powerboating as he is about helping other entrepreneurs launch businesses online. Richard is best known for founding web content management company Goss Interactive with Rob McCarthy and the inspirational round-the-world yachtsman Pete Goss. Established in 1999, Plymouth based Goss Interactive Ltd specialises in the development of world-class content management software and provides website development and hosting services. The company?s client base comprises commercial enterprises as well as public sector bodies with clients including GMTV, Virgin Trains and Brittany Ferries to name a few.


In 2007 Richard took up powerboat racing and raced his bright yellow powerboat in the Honda Formula Four Stroke Championships. In 2008 he started winning races and has now teamed up with 3 times National Offshore Circuit Racing Champion, Mark Walker to enter the World Xcat Powerboat Series in their 32 feet long catamaran which is powered by two 280HP Mercury race engines that push the boat to nearly 120mph!

FirstStore is his new on-line project. With BT Business recently revealing that 50 per cent of one-to-ten employee businesses have no web presence at all, Richard believes the time is right to help them go on line.  "Seventy two per cent of one-man bands have zero web presence. We?ve established FirstStore to help one-man bands and one-to-fours quickly set themselves up online, and our ethos is about support," he enthuses.

Piers Taylor

Piers Taylor is an IT industry veteran with over 20 years experience who has worked as Project Manager and Senior Developer creating extranet, intranet and websites for clients such as Virgin Mobile, Price Waterhouse Coopers and Skipton Building Society. In 2001 he led the four man team that redeveloped the GMTV website to a fully content managed dynamic site. He has a wide range of business experience having worked for Plymouth University's Department for Business Development. This included providing consultancy services to local businesses and as part of a 5 strong team setting up and co-ordinating 10 technology 'Innovation Centres' throughout the South West.
More recent work includes converting the UK and World Weather Datafeed provided by the Met Office into a customised format so as to provide an enhanced user experience as part of a general re-design of the GMTV website. The implementation was designed to be an extensible facility that maximises the possibilities contained within the Met Office weather data. The Soundlinx Product Finder intranet application allows Soundlinx staff to search their stock by entering criteria into standardised forms. They can then access photographs,  technical details, instruction manuals and pricing information from the result set returned. The stock database is also searchable on their website and customers and dealers can place orders on-line through the system.
The FirstStore project is a new development based on ideas that came through a number of his previous projects. "Making an easy to use version of these sort of business applications that literally anyone can use has been a pet project for some time," he explains. "We believe putting this kind of functionality and support package out at the FirstStore must-have price point allows us to generate and share in our customers' success".