VTRAD Ltd. was founded in March 1997 with the aim of bringing e-commerce to small to medium sized enterprises in the UK fashion industry. Working closely with Surge London Ltd., a "Clubwear and Streetwear" design and manufacturing company, VTRAD built a paradigm Internet fashion store that allowed the online purchase of any of Surge's extensive fashion range. Their site contained a number of original features that were both innovative and practical and helped ensure it became a great success. Due to the attention this site received, eight other fashion companies, who wanted to open sales channels to the global market, joined the site, creating the first British online fashion hyper-mall.

With the impact of the fashion store VTRAD began developing bespoke software solutions for an extensive range of clients. From live database driven web-sites for the motor-sports industry to secure subscription systems for political parties, VTRAD's contract portfolio grew while maintaining a strong focus on electronic commerce. The rapid expansion of the Internet industry in general (and e-commerce in particular) generated an enormous need for advanced web server software development. With VTRAD's professional approach and extensive experience, this became our major area of business.

With so many of our clients demanding e-commerce solutions all of which had common elements, VTRAD began construction of the SiteMaker project in 1997, a package that allowed many merchants to be under the control of a single host. A prototype with a fixed web-interface was used for Manchester Council's contribution to the InfoCities project. As a result of the experience gained during the initial construction of Site-Maker, a second and much more powerful software product was conceived. Aimed at large host organisations the MAX project could accommodate the need of thousands of merchants all simultaneously selling tens of thousands of items. The MAX project became Britain's contribution to the 1998 G8 Initiative for electronic commerce. Both SiteMaker and MAX concentrated on creating manageable e-commerce facilities for small to medium sized enterprises. With a suite of advanced functionality including fax notification of orders, links into the GSM mobile phone system allowing SMS alerts for orders, country specific tax calculations and built in weight calculators for major shipping companies (such as Parcel Force and TNT), both software systems were truly state of the art.