The history of Jigsaw24 through its buildings

By Ana Perez December 20, 2022

Early beginnings

Jigsaw24 started in 1992 as Jigsaw Systems Ltd. Our first office was located right here in a terraced house in the centre of Nottingham on Derby Road. However, from day one we were a rapidly expanding business and as a result, we quickly moved out of this office building and into The Old Mill, High Church Street in North Nottingham, our headquarters to this day.

Nottingham Headquarters

Our headquarters is home to many of our teams and operations.

It’s located in The Old Mill, High Church Street, in New Basford, a historic 1870s building with an interesting past full of twists and turns. At one point in history, The Old Mill was owned by John Lewis, and from 1917 to 1919, the site was known as the New Basford National Ordinance Factory. Originally, it used to stand tall at seven storeys and was one of the largest buildings in Nottingham. Today it has just two storeys.

We first moved in in 1993, and since then, we have continuously developed the building to accommodate our fantastic growth. To enhance collaboration, energy and a sense of fun, the meeting rooms are all themed in eclectic homage to various iconic people, times, challenges and places like Steve Jobs, Betamax, Robin Hood, the Japanese nation, environmental preservation, Alan Turing, The Library, William Shakespeare, Andy Warhol and the Space Race.

The 90s and 00s saw the rise of the internet and with it, the birth of online commerce and the early stages of social media – and it also saw the number of our employees more than double. Jigsaw24's services adapted and evolved as demands changed and new technological advancements brought with them different opportunities for us and for our customers.

As we put the spotlight on productivity and customer service, with additional service propositions adding value for our clients, our headquarters expanded accordingly: a new warehouse alongside state-of-the-art repairs, configuration and staging facilities. This was a game-changer: Jigsaw24 now sells well over 100,000 Apple devices every year, often prepared right under our noses in our headquarters before being despatched across the country into our clients’ hands.

As we continue developing as a company, The Old Mill will continue being a key part of that journey, and we are always looking forward to more improvements that we can introduce next.

M1 Service Centre

Our Service Centre, located at Phoenix Business Park just off the M1 Junction 26, is a relatively recent addition to the company, opening in November 2021.

Due to the rapid expansion of our services offerings and our client portfolio, we have had a steady increase in the number of staff that work for us. As well as space for more colleagues, we also wanted to have the capacity to offer longer support hours as we expand our service catalogue, along with the provision of a suitable meet up spot for these clients.

That’s why we chose a building just a mile from the M1 and also the local tram terminus, so it’s both easier to reach and to commute to in a greener way as part of our decarbonisation initiatives. We have now moved many of our customer-facing teams there. The Service Centre also gives a nod to our traditional home of nearby Nottingham, with meeting rooms themed after historic areas of Nottingham.

London Experience Centre

As Jigsaw24 grew, we recognised that we wanted to offer our customers more events, touchpoints and more demos. Having a presence in London is very appealing for most businesses, particularly bearing in mind the significant presence of many video production houses in the city who could benefit from our services, live demonstrations and meetup spaces for our clients located in the capital.

Our Soho site at Golden Square opened back in 2014 and was a customer-facing creative IT experience centre, particularly for our media and design customers. The focus here was put on interactive engagement, so our customers could see specialist setups in action.

It housed three demo rooms covering Pro Video, Pro Audio, Infrastructure and Apple for Enterprise. We have hosted over 300 events since our opening, entertaining approximately 1,500 customers every year.

In November 2022, we moved our London office to a new location in Whitfield Street, off Tottenham Court Road in historic Fitzrovia. This new facility is primarily a customer and partner-facing media and IT centre, as well as a collaborative working hub for our London-based and visiting colleagues, with a mixture of hot desks, work points and meeting rooms. It's a great space to host our many customer meetings, end-user compute events, training and of course, to house our cutting-edge media & entertainment demo facility.

Our aims for the future

Environmental sustainability is at the core of our entire business model – and that begins with our facilities. Some of the initiatives we’re working on include:

·      Continually upgrading our environmental and energy management certifications as well as other complex acronyms such as Eco Vadis, CDP, CPP, SBTI, ISO, Albert, EPC, Net Positives and many others.

·      Offering EV charging facilities at our Headquarters and M1 Service Centre.

·      Running on 100% renewable clean electricity – we achieved this milestone for all our premises around mid-2022.

·      Dozens more initiatives from oat milk in all our kitchens to a proactive recycling approach.

We always aim to translate our team-focused atmosphere into facilities that are comfortable for our colleagues, offering a range of spaces for different types of work from meeting rooms to collaborative spaces. This also includes quiet/prayer rooms, gender-neutral toilets and community spaces to unwind like kitchen facilities and spacious staff rooms.

We listen to employee feedback and adapt, so we can create a working environment that’s perfect for everyone.

Have you visited any of the Jigsaw24 locations? Please let us know about your experiences in the comments on Twitter or LinkedIn. Thank you!