Company history

Thanks for visiting our site! Now that you know what we do, I wanted to give you a bit more background on  why we’re here. I founded Bear Group in Seattle in January 2007 on a passion for open source platforms— especially Drupal, and later Magento—and their power to grow a business. Small businesses no longer have to license expensive software to get started, or depend on a webmaster to keep their sites up to date; large businesses are made more efficient with a rock-solid CMS and e-commerce platform that don’t require the development or management of proprietary platforms.

Since Bear Group opened, we have been able to help companies grow their business in many different ways. Sometimes it’s by creating a new sales channel by opening an online store--  or driving sales by vastly improving an existing one. Sometimes it’s by developing a more professional, authoritative web presence, or building a site that’s ready for search engine marketing. Sometimes it’s by empowering a business to manage its own site so it can keep it fresh and ensure that customers have a reason to visit. And sometimes it’s in the cost savings of making a web business so much more efficient.

We work with clients ranging in size and representing many different industries. My own background is a mix of technology and business (Computer Science degree as an undergrad, followed by an MBA), and I’ve worked as a founding member of three startups as well as on 200+ marketing/technology projects for Microsoft.  So I enjoy the challenges of both a new business and a larger, more established one, and I like to look at growth potential holistically.

The Bear Group team has grown over time to include developers in different specialties, technical project managers, consultants, and content coordinators. Our services have also expanded—not only do we build web sites and e-commerce solutions, but we deploy dedicated development teams for large, long-term projects and provide Drupal and Magento consulting. We also offer ongoing consulting and support to all existing clients—100 at last count.

At the heart of everything we do are strong documentation and client communication. We challenge our clients with fresh perspective, we go deep on every idea, and we push ourselves to deliver innovative solutions for all our clients.

Please be in touch with any comments or questions as you look through the site!

Sincerely,
Greg Bear, Founder