The History of ICBIG
Over 30 years of heritage and service to SMBs
Our history makes us who we are today.
We survived and thrived by innovating and adapting – what we do for our clients
ICBIG’s story goes back further than most people realise. Although the name itself arrived in 2002 as the ICBusiness Internet Gateway (ICBIG) — a portal for our IT and internet clients, complete with B2B service listings and a membership‑style support hub — the real beginning was years earlier.
We started in the mid‑1990s in New Zealand (hence the kiwi bird everywhere) as an advertising company specialising in direct marketing. Back then it was telemarketers, fax campaigns, outdoor advertising, and, as the internet arrived, banner sales and early email marketing. That shift pushed us into IT, building websites and portals long before it was common. Our first was a car sales and rental website (LONG before we built the Garage Directory here in the UK).
We’ve seen a lot in the last quarter‑century
SMBs who are agile and adapt thrive – we proved it
We were there for the crash — the bursting of the banner‑ad bubble in the early 2000s. It was a hard lesson, but we survived it, adapted, and reset expectations for ourselves and our clients. It helped reassure our clients and retain them through the crash and beyond. Due to this adaptability and the SMBs we serviced, we made a deliberate choice: focus on SMBs. We’d sold thousands of PCs to schools, corporates and everyone else, but the work we enjoyed — and the work that mattered — was with small and medium businesses. So we changed direction.
After Simon moved to the UK for personal reasons, he saw a huge gap in the market. SMBs were being fleeced because they had no real alternative. Fixing that became the foundation of everything that followed.
ICBIG was born then, we just hadn’t realised it or branded it.
Natural evolution built from the ground up
Fast evolution until we found the brand. The ICBIG beginning
ICBusiness came first — the Infotech Computers Business era, around 2000–2001. Then ICBIG was created as a client portal. Over time it grew, changed, and adapted through everything thrown at it: the crash of 2008, the global chaos of COVID‑19, and all the smaller challenges in between.
Through all of it, our focus on SMBs didn’t just keep us steady — it helped us grow. We acknowledge that in every fibre of who we are. It’s why we’ll always be the Small Business Champions. It’s why we’ll always have a phone you can call, a person you can speak to, and a business that stands by yours through hard times — because SMBs stood by us.
When you want a digital solutions provider that genuinely wants to help your business, we are here, as we have been for for 25+ years.
