The name that came before.
IDX was the trading name of this studio from its founding in 1997 until the early 2000s, when it became Futurestore. The domain has been held continuously ever since. This is the story of what happened in between - and what has stayed the same.
Before the platforms. Before the templates.
In 1997, building an ecommerce website meant writing the shopping cart logic yourself. There were no platforms, no plugins, no drag-and-drop builders. The SSL certificate for taking card payments was a significant expense. The whole concept of buying something online was still unusual enough that customers often needed reassurance it was safe to try.
That's when IDX started. One person, in Cornwall, building online shops from scratch for small UK businesses that wanted to sell online.
Google launched in September 1998 - after IDX was already trading. PayPal launched in 1999. Shopify didn't exist until 2006. This isn't a claim about being ahead of the curve. It's just the record of what actually happened.
IDX is founded.
Lawrence Brendish begins building websites commercially. The focus from the start is ecommerce - helping small UK businesses take orders and sell products online. The domain idx.co.uk is registered around this time.
The web finds its footing.
Google launches. Broadband is still years away for most households. Online shopping is growing but most people still don't trust it. IDX is already building shops for businesses willing to bet on the idea early.
IDX becomes Futurestore.
The studio rebrands. The name Futurestore better reflects the ecommerce specialisation and the direction the work is going. idx.co.uk is retained - the history doesn't disappear, it just gets a new name for the next chapter.
Shopify launches. The industry changes.
Template-based ecommerce platforms start arriving. Futurestore adapts - not by competing on price with automated tools, but by doubling down on bespoke builds and the kind of considered, individual design that platforms can't deliver.
The proprietary control panel.
Futurestore develops its own back-end control panel so clients can manage their own shops without needing technical knowledge. Over the following decade it handles hundreds of thousands of product updates and orders.
Still one person. Still Cornwall.
600+ shops built. Ranked 2nd of 357 UK ecommerce companies on FreeIndex. 4.9 stars from 21 verified reviews. The Futurestore studio still operates from Carharrack, Redruth. Lawrence still does every project himself - design, build, hosting, and ongoing support.
Same person. Same craft. Different name.
The rebrand from IDX to Futurestore changed a lot of surface things - the name, the logo, eventually the website. What it didn't change was the approach: one person doing all the work, fixed prices, no upselling, no hand-off to a junior once the contract is signed.
The shops IDX built in the late 1990s worked because they were built properly. The shops ecommerce website design studio Futurestore builds today work for the same reason. The platforms and tools have changed enormously. The underlying discipline hasn't.
There's something valuable about a studio that's still doing the same core thing it started doing in 1997. The knowledge compounds. The problems encountered twenty years ago still turn up - and the experience of having solved them before helps.
Visit Futurestore today →Lawrence Brendish.
"I started IDX because I could see that small businesses were going to need a way to sell online. Most of the tools to do that properly didn't exist yet, so we built them."
Lawrence has been the only person involved in every project since 1997. He does the design, the build, the hosting setup, the domain management, the training, and the ongoing support. There are no account managers, no project coordinators, no juniors assigned to your site while the senior person moves on to the next pitch. One person, start to finish.
He's based in Carharrack, a small village in west Cornwall, and works with clients UK-wide. Most communication happens by phone and email. Projects don't require in-person meetings.
IDX is now Futurestore.
If you'd like to build an online shop, the place to go is futurestore.co.uk. Same person who started IDX in 1997. Still in Cornwall. Still taking on new work.
Visit futurestore.co.uk →Phone: 01209 706544 · info@futurestore.co.uk