About Us
Open Source, Open Standards, Open Minds
Losource was founded in 2004 (although the idea dates back to 2001) - with a mission to move away from purely bespoke web development and leverage what was then an emerging array of open source content management systems. We realised that by using these pre-existing systems we could provide better quality websites in less time and for less money.
Since then, we have broadened our focus to include standards based development, accessibility, and much more. We put ethics at the centre of everything we do - we don't use open source and open standards just because they are good for us, we use them because they are good for our clients too.
We believe that the best way to have happy clients is to give them complete control over their own on-line activity, effectively removing their reliance on us as much as possible by providing them with a rich yet easy to use set of tools to do the job, together with the training necessary to use them. This allows our clients to take the driving seat and control their own destinies without recourse to us.
Of course, not all clients desire this level of autonomy - some are so busy with the day to day running of their own businesses that they prefer a third party to take care of it, and we can do that too.
Avoiding Agency Lock-in
Another very good argument for embracing open source software and open standards for the production of your website is the understandable desire to avoid agency lock-in. It is not always obvious that by allowing an agency to produce a purely bespoke system on your behalf (or a system that an agency has developed in-house), you are often at risk from being effectively 'locked in' to using that agency in the future. The problem is that the agency who developed the system are the only ones properly qualified to work with it, and by extension, work with your website. If you decide to change agencies in the future it is more than likely that you will have to forgo your existing site and investment. With our model, you may easily take your business elsewhere (although, of course we hope you won't!). We like to think that our clients will use us again and again because they value our work, not because they have no choice.
The Commoditisation of Production
Recently, eminent new media commentator Jon Bains opined that:
"It is increasingly difficult to differentiate yourself in terms of production – most clients simply aren’t that discerning and so much of the world is being outsourced overseas by default. However there are many, genuine craftsfolk, pushing the boundaries in their respective medium who are marginalised due to size and lack of appreciation of the nuance of ‘good’. How can these people be harnessed?"
We believe that this applies to us, in spades. All of us here at Losource have been working in the industry for many years, and it's simply not just a job to us - we live and breathe it every day. This is what marks us out from your average agency. We are not a design agency with a couple of techies to do the builds, we are technical to the tips of our toes. We have spent many years researching and testing the vast array of tools out there in order to find just the right fit, whether you are looking for a website, an on-line store, a social network, or a combination of all three.
On top of all this, we are based up north and this allows us to price our jobs more keenly. When you commission a job at Losource, you're not paying for our swanky London offices and sky high London salaries.