36 years on! A birthday stroll through the history of MakoLab

It all begins in Łódź. The end of the nineteen eighties is a time of enormous upheaval and change. And we’re part of it all!

• 1989. Our origins! Mako Typesetting is founded. The company specialises in advanced publishing and DTP services. These are our roots and we’re extremely proud of them.
• 1993. A new name and new horizons. The company changes its name to MakoLab. At the same time, we zoom in strategically on the world of software and begin building and sell academic applications.
• 1995. We enter the global stage. MakoLab starts collaborating with HyperCube (Canada/USA) and Fujitsu Kyushu System Engineering (Japan). We set our sights high from the word go!
• 1996. The Internet revolution. As one of the first website creators in Poland, our work includes a groundbreaking site for Bank PBG. That’s right... we’re Polish Internet pioneers!
• 1997. We establish our own data centre! Launching the MakoLab data centre gives us previously unimaginable independence and the power to carry out increasingly ambitious projects.
• 1998. Our first large client and proprietary system. We begin collaborating with the Philips brand. As well as designing their website, we create MakoCRM, our first proprietary system, which supports international projects and loyalty programmes.

We welcome the twenty-first century bursting with energy and ride it into the technological premier league.

• 2001. Our legendary collaboration with Renault begins. We start with intranet and extranet solutions for the company’s Polish division, launching what will become a long-term, strategic adventure.
• 2003. Our proprietary systems take the world by storm. We create RSI-CMS for Renault and it goes on to be deployed in more than 60 countries. At the same time, we have MegaSale/MegaManage, later known as Fractus, under development for Point-S.
• 2005. MakoLab digitalises shopping centres. Our proprietary system, ColDis, designed for the management of large retail buildings, is deployed in Poland’s ten largest shopping centres, managed by Cefic Polska.
• 2007. MakoLab debuts on the stock exchange! 21^st December goes down in the annals of our history as the day our company enters the Warsaw Stock Exchange’s NewConnect market.
• 2008. The heights of the automotive industry! The website we create for Renault UK is named the best in the automotive industry in the prestigious AutoTrader survey. This is a moment when the whole world sees what we’re capable of!

This is a decade where we not only follow trends, but start actively setting them!

• 2011. We immerse ourselves in the world of semantics. MakoLab starts work on extending our offering to embrace semantic technology in collaboration with Hepp Research GmbH.
• 2013. Partnering with Sitecore and expanding. We carry out international projects in the USA and Lithuania, for NuSil and PZU Lietuva, respectively.
• 2015-2016. We create global standards. We publish our proprietary Car and Finance extensions for schema.org. A team of experts lead by MakoLab’s founder Mirek Sopek, PhD., positions us as world leaders in the technology.
• 2017. Our growing strength. We launch our Delivery Centre in Lublin, strengthen our teams abroad and achieve the prestigious ISO 27001 information security certificate.
• 2018. A new home and new technology. We move into the state-of-the-art office building at ul. Ogrodowa 8 in Łódź. Our R&D department announces the creation of GraphChain, a revolutionary combination of graph database and blockchain technology.
• 2019. We boost our position in FinTech. We evolve the MakoLab range of financial simulators and win a European Commission tender for supporting the development of financial ontologies leveraging machine learning.

Despite the global challenges that marked the beginning of the new decade, it was a time of extraordinarily intensive development for MakoLab, with a focus on the technologies of the future.

During this period, we’ve had the honour of carrying out crucial projects for giants in their sectors. We’re proud of the trust placed in us by brands like Maspex, Toyota, Puzzler and PZU, to name but a few. 

Over the past five years, we have primarily concentrated on four pillars.

1. Continuous development. As far as expanding our skill sets and growing our operational scale are concerned, we never stop, not even for a moment.
2. Cutting-edge technologies. These are what lie at the heart of everything we do.
3. Security. In today’s digital world, this is an absolute priority for us, as our growing numbers of certificates and satisfied clients confirm.
4. Working with AI. This is genuinely groundbreaking. At MakoLab, we do much more than simply leverage artificial intelligence. We also really do put it to work in tandem with us, creating smarter, more productive and more innovative solutions that give our partners palpable market advantages.

This timeline is just a very brief overview of our history, of course. Every single point we’ve mentioned represents hundreds of hours of work, brilliant ideas, the incredibly committed people who created MakoLab and those who make it what it is today.

We’d like to thank all our fantastic clients and partners, along with every member of staff, for the past thirty-six years. The journey would have been impossible without you.

And now? Let’s raise a toast to a long succession of years to come, filled with challenges, technological breakthroughs and shared successes.

Many happy returns, MakoLab!