Sheffield Data Specialists Giving Digital Life to the Spirit of ‘Little Mesters’

In 2014, we launched databowl – a smart new lead management system that helps companies to connect with the real people most relevant to their business. Over the last two years, Databowl has become a huge hit with successful organisations all over the world. From its intelligent lead validation algorithms, to its intuitive, hands-on interface, we’re proud to say that our software has become an integral part of business for not only fresh-faced start-ups eager to increase sales, but also for established, blue-chip organisations looking to build more meaningful relationships with their existing customers. As a business, Databowl has grown considerably. With growth comes change, and so we’re pleased to announce that, this week, we are moving our HQ to a new location – a place rich in local history, and bursting with stories that are very close to our hearts: Kelham Island, Sheffield.

Our Sheffield Roots

Each member of our team understands the pride that people put in their Sheffield roots, and if there’s one thing everybody knows about Sheffield, it has to be its steel. For those of you who don’t know, since as early as the mid-1700s, Sheffield has been famous all over the world for its involvement in the steel industry – partly for its high-quality of steel production, and partly for its invention of stainless steel. Now, much of Sheffield’s reputation for steel production was thanks to a network of hard-working, self-employed professionals who called themselves the ‘Little Mesters’. This group of steel workers was made up of highly-specialised individuals, who all had their own unique skills. Some would slave away every hour of the day, hammering lumps of steel into crude shapes; others would apply their expertise shaping these lumps into the tools they would become; and some would have become masters in the art of finishing and polishing each tool to perfection. At the peak of their popularity in the mid-1800s, the Little Mesters are thought to have been making the biggest contribution to the overall production of steel products bearing the much-desired Sheffield stamp. They were true artisan craftsmen, who applied every ounce of skill and dedication they had, into making the finest steel products that were wanted all over the world.

The Artisan Craftsmen of the Data Industry

Here at databowl, we’re proud of the strong industrial heritage our city boasts, and we’re even prouder to be moving to Kelham Island – the very place where the original Little Mesters setup their workshops and machinery to produce their world-famous steel cutlery and tools. In fact, our team has often been compared with the Little Mesters – and it’s a comparison we really love. Sure, we might be working in a totally different industry, and we might have replaced some of the tools we’re working with… but our little digital workshop still has the same strong spirit of hard work, innovation, and utter focus on superb quality that made the original Little Mesters so famous all over the world. We hammer away on our keyboards instead of our anvils. We push down on mouse buttons instead of on steel presses. We polish our programming instead of our knives and forks. But in the end? We produce a unique product that has been through the same rigorous processing and attention to quality as the tools our city was once so famous for. Our team is fiercely proud of our roots, and we’re very excited to be moving into a place that is at the very heart of Sheffield’s beautiful history. We will work hard to honour those who were here before us, by proving that even in an age of digital technology, Sheffielders are still made of steel and are adding fuel to the growing northern powerhouse.