About The1stMovement

The1stMovement is an award-winning web development company. The1stMovement's team provides innovative solutions to their clients' advertising challenges. While others lead with creativity, we lead with our mastery of technology to better tell your story. They help you develop the way you do business and interact with your clients and stakeholders.

Last updated May 13, 2026

Services

Mobile App Development Web Development Chat Bots & AI Development

Industries Served

Media & Entertainment Fashion & Apparel Gaming & Gambling Insurance Retail & E-commerce Healthcare

The1stMovement Reviews

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End-to-end IoT solution with firmware, cloud, and dashboard that all actually talk to each other

Yuki Hashimoto / Head of Product Development - East Asia Commerce KK
Verified
Feb 17, 2026

Project summary: An international expansion required multi-currency, multi-language, and multi-warehouse capabilities that our existing platform could not support without a fundamental re-architecture.

The project brief was ambitious and we had received proposals ranging from two to five times our eventual budget from other vendors. This team came back with a proposal that was commercially realistic and technically credible — and then delivered against it. That alignment between proposal and outcome is not something I take for granted. I have been on the other side of it enough times to know it requires both honesty in the sales process and discipline in delivery. We experienced both.

PROS

Architectural decisions designed for longevity rather than just the current brief, thorough automated test coverage, post-launch stability that validated every technical choice made during discovery

CONS

Pipeline availability for kickoff required a few weeks of lead time — in hindsight that selection pressure means you are working with a team that is in demand for the right reasons

4.0
Overall
4.5
Quality
4.5
Schedule
4.5
Cost
4.0
Communication
Project TypeIoT Development
IndustryRetail & E-commerce
Project Cost$150,000 to $499,999
DurationAug 2025 – Jan 2026

Questions & Answers

Please describe your company, your role, and the industry you operate in.
East Asia Commerce KK operates in the Retail & E-commerce sector with headquarters in Osaka, Japan. In my role as Head of Product Development I am accountable for the full technology agenda — infrastructure, product, and vendor relationships. We are a commercially driven organisation and every technology decision is evaluated against a clear business case before it is approved.
What specific problem or business challenge led you to hire this company?
Our platform had been maintained by a previous vendor for three years and the accumulated technical debt had reached a point where delivery velocity had dropped to a fraction of what it should have been. We needed fresh engineering expertise and a structured plan to address the underlying issues.
What services did the company provide for your project?
The core engagement was IoT Development delivery, though their scope expanded to include technical consultancy during discovery that materially improved our requirements. They also took ownership of the third-party integration workstream that had been a coordination challenge in previous projects, removing that complexity from our internal team entirely.
Why did you choose this company over other providers you considered?
We ran a structured shortlisting process across five vendors. The technical evaluation eliminated two immediately. Of the remaining three, this team's proposal was differentiated by the specificity of their IoT Development approach and the evidence base they provided — reference projects in Retail & E-commerce contexts, not generic case studies. The reference calls confirmed a track record that the proposal had described accurately.
How clearly did the company understand your requirements and business goals?
Extremely well, in part because they had relevant Retail & E-commerce experience that reduced the context-setting overhead significantly. They understood the domain vocabulary, asked the right questions, and translated business requirements into technical specifications with a fidelity that meant the development phase had very few clarification cycles.
How was your overall experience with their communication and project management?
Outstanding. The discipline around asynchronous communication was particularly effective given the time zones involved between Osaka, Japan and the delivery team. Written updates were specific and consistent, response times were same-day for anything that required a decision, and nothing fell through the cracks across a six-month engagement.
Did the company deliver the project on time and within your expected budget?
Yes to both. There was a single sprint where a dependency on a third-party API introduced a one-week delay. The team identified it three weeks in advance, presented two mitigation options, and we agreed on an approach that recovered the schedule within the same sprint cycle. That level of foresight is what separates good project management from reactive problem management.
What tangible results or business impact have you seen since the project was completed?
We went live four months ago. User adoption exceeded the target we had set by 23 percent in the first month. Support ticket volume has dropped measurably. The features we had deferred because the previous architecture made them prohibitively expensive to build are now in development. The platform they built has opened our roadmap.
What did you like most about working with this company?
Their instinct for keeping the business objective visible throughout technical decision-making. I have worked with technically excellent teams who lose the strategic thread as complexity increases. This team maintained a clear connection between every architectural choice and the outcome we had agreed to achieve. That orientation made the trade-off conversations significantly easier.
Would you recommend this company to others, and would you work with them again?
Absolutely. With a specific note that the value starts in the discovery phase — clients who approach that process with seriousness will get the most from the engagement. We invested appropriately at the front end and the returns are evident in what was delivered.

Mixed reality build that landed exactly where the brief pointed and then went further

Maja Söderström / Head of Product Engineering - Scandia Digital AB
Verified
Jan 19, 2026

Project summary: Remote care had gone from an experiment to a core service line and our technology had not kept pace. We needed a robust, compliant telehealth platform in a timeline that the market would not wait for.

The technical quality of the final deliverable is the easiest thing to point to. The automated test coverage is thorough, the deployment pipeline is reliable, the documentation is genuinely useful rather than ceremonially produced. But the metric I keep returning to is the number of post-launch conversations we have not had to have. No incident calls at two in the morning. No emergency patches. No retrospective discussions about what went wrong. The absence of those events is the evidence I would show to someone considering this vendor.

PROS

Commercially transparent throughout — no hidden assumptions, no bill shock at the end, change requests that were fair and clearly explained rather than used as a margin-recovery mechanism

CONS

Time zone coordination required some deliberate overlap management from both sides in the first couple of sprints, after which we had an efficient async rhythm that worked for the whole project

4.0
Overall
4.5
Quality
4.5
Schedule
4.0
Cost
3.5
Communication
Project TypeAR/VR Development
IndustryHealthcare
Project Cost$150,000 to $499,999
DurationApr 2025 – Nov 2025

Questions & Answers

Please describe your company, your role, and the industry you operate in.
Scandia Digital AB operates in the Healthcare sector with headquarters in Gothenburg, Sweden. In my role as Head of Product Engineering I am accountable for the full technology agenda — infrastructure, product, and vendor relationships. We are a commercially driven organisation and every technology decision is evaluated against a clear business case before it is approved.
What specific problem or business challenge led you to hire this company?
The immediate problem was that our AR/VR Development capability had become the bottleneck limiting our ability to grow. Every feature request, every new client requirement, every internal initiative was delayed by a platform that had been extended beyond its original design. We needed a rebuild, not a patch.
What services did the company provide for your project?
End-to-end AR/VR Development delivery with particular depth in the integration and data migration components, which were the highest-risk elements of the programme. They supplemented this with a dedicated QA resource throughout development and a documented runbook for our operations team at handover.
Why did you choose this company over other providers you considered?
The quality of the questions they asked during the briefing process was the first indicator. Vendors who ask precise questions in the sales phase tend to apply the same rigour during delivery. That hypothesis proved accurate. The technical proposal was substantive, the team structure was senior throughout, and the pricing was transparent.
How clearly did the company understand your requirements and business goals?
Extremely well, in part because they had relevant Healthcare experience that reduced the context-setting overhead significantly. They understood the domain vocabulary, asked the right questions, and translated business requirements into technical specifications with a fidelity that meant the development phase had very few clarification cycles.
How was your overall experience with their communication and project management?
Outstanding. The discipline around asynchronous communication was particularly effective given the time zones involved between Gothenburg, Sweden and the delivery team. Written updates were specific and consistent, response times were same-day for anything that required a decision, and nothing fell through the cracks across a six-month engagement.
Did the company deliver the project on time and within your expected budget?
Yes to both. There was a single sprint where a dependency on a third-party API introduced a one-week delay. The team identified it three weeks in advance, presented two mitigation options, and we agreed on an approach that recovered the schedule within the same sprint cycle. That level of foresight is what separates good project management from reactive problem management.
What tangible results or business impact have you seen since the project was completed?
Quantifying the impact precisely is complicated by other variables in our business, but the metrics we can attribute directly to the AR/VR Development work are meaningful: session duration up, conversion rate up, error rate down, and our NPS for the digital touchpoint has improved by eleven points. Our account managers report that the new capability is coming up positively in client conversations.
What did you like most about working with this company?
The willingness to be direct. When our requirements were unclear they said so. When our priorities were contradictory they explained why. When a technical approach we had assumed was the right one turned out to have significant downsides, they told us before we had committed to it. That kind of intellectual honesty is what I look for in a long-term technology partner.
Would you recommend this company to others, and would you work with them again?
Yes, without reservation. I have already made two direct referrals within my Healthcare network — in both cases to peers facing AR/VR Development challenges similar to ours. I gave those referrals with confidence because I knew the experience I described was reproducible, not the result of exceptional circumstances on our engagement.

End-to-end quality programme that halved our post-release incident rate inside three months

Aarav Mehta / Chief Data Officer - Zenith FinServ Ltd
Verified
Jan 11, 2026

Project summary: First notice of loss processing was taking three days on average. Market benchmarks were under four hours. Automation of the intake and triage workflow was the agreed priority.

I came into this engagement as a sceptic. We had been through a failed implementation with a previous vendor and I had high standards for what evidence of competence looked like before I would trust a partner with our core systems. This team earned that trust progressively — through the quality of the discovery documentation, the rigour of the technical proposals, the consistency of the sprint deliveries, and ultimately the stability of the production system. I no longer lead with scepticism when recommending them.

PROS

Architectural decisions designed for longevity rather than just the current brief, thorough automated test coverage, post-launch stability that validated every technical choice made during discovery

CONS

Their insistence on a detailed functional specification before development began felt like friction at the time. In retrospect, it was the reason the development phase ran without the ambiguity that has derailed similar projects for us previously

4.5
Overall
5.0
Quality
5.0
Schedule
4.5
Cost
4.5
Communication
Project TypeQuality Assurance & Testing
IndustryInsurance
Project Cost$150,000 to $499,999
DurationAug 2025 – Nov 2025

Questions & Answers

Please describe your company, your role, and the industry you operate in.
I lead technology at Zenith FinServ Ltd, a growth-stage Insurance business based in Bangalore, India. As Chief Data Officer my remit spans product engineering, platform operations, and strategic vendor partnerships. We had reached an inflection point where our internal capacity was not sufficient to execute our roadmap at the pace our market required.
What specific problem or business challenge led you to hire this company?
Our platform had been maintained by a previous vendor for three years and the accumulated technical debt had reached a point where delivery velocity had dropped to a fraction of what it should have been. We needed fresh engineering expertise and a structured plan to address the underlying issues.
What services did the company provide for your project?
End-to-end Quality Assurance & Testing delivery with particular depth in the integration and data migration components, which were the highest-risk elements of the programme. They supplemented this with a dedicated QA resource throughout development and a documented runbook for our operations team at handover.
Why did you choose this company over other providers you considered?
A trusted peer in the Insurance sector had used them for a comparable Quality Assurance & Testing engagement and their recommendation was unequivocal. Our own due diligence confirmed the pattern they described. The combination of domain knowledge, Quality Assurance & Testing depth, and demonstrated delivery discipline was the deciding factor.
How clearly did the company understand your requirements and business goals?
Thoroughly and precisely. The requirements document they produced was detailed enough that our QA team used it directly to write acceptance criteria. Every user story had a defined business objective attached. Nothing was left to interpretation. That discipline in the requirements phase paid dividends throughout development and testing.
How was your overall experience with their communication and project management?
The project management framework was the most structured I have experienced with an external vendor. Sprint planning was tight, acceptance criteria were specific, retrospectives were honest and acted on. The project manager treated the shared backlog as a live document and the risk register as an operational tool rather than a compliance artefact. I never had to ask for a status update.
Did the company deliver the project on time and within your expected budget?
Yes to both. There was a single sprint where a dependency on a third-party API introduced a one-week delay. The team identified it three weeks in advance, presented two mitigation options, and we agreed on an approach that recovered the schedule within the same sprint cycle. That level of foresight is what separates good project management from reactive problem management.
What tangible results or business impact have you seen since the project was completed?
The most direct measure is the performance of the system in production. In the five months since go-live we have had zero P1 incidents, our page performance scores have improved across every Core Web Vitals metric, and two enterprise clients who had cited our previous platform limitations during contract negotiations have since renewed without that objection arising.
What did you like most about working with this company?
The continuity of the team. The engineers who participated in the discovery sessions were the engineers who built the system. That consistency of institutional knowledge across a six-month project has a value that is difficult to quantify but easy to notice when it is absent. Every conversation built on the previous ones.
Would you recommend this company to others, and would you work with them again?
Yes. I would add the context that this is not the cheapest option in the market and they are selective about the engagements they take on. If your primary criterion is price, there are alternatives. If you want a technology partner who can be trusted with a complex Quality Assurance & Testing programme in the Insurance space and will deliver against a serious brief, this is the team.

Company Info

Founded 2006
Employees 10 - 49
Hourly Rate $100 - $149
Client Rating 4.2/5 (8 reviews)

Rating Breakdown

Quality
4.3
Schedule
4.4
Cost
4.3
Communication
4.1

FAQs

Roughly how long does a project with The1stMovement take start to finish?
It depends heavily on scope. A lean MVP might be a matter of weeks, while a full enterprise system or a larger digital transformation project can stretch into months once you factor in development, testing, and deployment. With a team of 10 - 49 professionals, The1stMovement can scale resources based on project urgency.
What's the easiest way to actually get in touch with The1stMovement?
Most businesses reach The1stMovement through its website, a direct email, or a contact form — any of which works for discussing what you need, booking an initial conversation, or asking for a rough estimate. For context, it has experience across industries such as Media & Entertainment, Insurance, Retail & E-commerce, Gaming & Gambling, Healthcare and Fashion & Apparel, and its average project cost is reported at $100000+.
What kind of software work does The1stMovement take on?
The1stMovement typically covers the standard range of software development work — mobile apps, web platforms, custom internal tools, UI/UX design, cloud infrastructure, AI integrations, and larger enterprise builds. Its core focus areas include Chat Bots & AI Development, Web Development and Mobile App Development.
Can I just hire developers from The1stMovement to sit alongside my own team?
Usually, yes — a dedicated developer arrangement is a common option with firms like The1stMovement, where you get engineers working exclusively on your project as an extension of your in-house team rather than as a separate outsourced unit. For context, its listed capabilities span Chat Bots & AI Development, Web Development and Mobile App Development, and it has been operating since 2006.
Has The1stMovement actually shipped a SaaS product before?
It's a common line of work for a company like The1stMovement — multi-tenant architecture, subscription billing hooked up properly, and cloud-native deployment built for a product meant to scale as a service rather than a one-off build. For context, it has experience across industries such as Media & Entertainment, Insurance, Retail & E-commerce, Gaming & Gambling, Healthcare and Fashion & Apparel, and its average project cost is reported at $100000+.
What kinds of industries has The1stMovement actually built for?
The1stMovement has delivered projects across a range of different industries, including Media & Entertainment, Insurance, Retail & E-commerce, Gaming & Gambling, Healthcare and Fashion & Apparel.
Does The1stMovement only work locally, or take on clients elsewhere too?
The1stMovement isn't necessarily limited to one region and may take on clients across several countries, depending on market demand and business partnerships.
Is The1stMovement more of an offshore setup or a local team?
That depends on where The1stMovement is based and who they primarily serve — some firms like this operate fully offshore, some are local-first, and plenty run a hybrid model that mixes both. For context, it has experience across industries such as Media & Entertainment, Insurance, Retail & E-commerce, Gaming & Gambling, Healthcare and Fashion & Apparel, and its typical hourly rate is around $100 - $149.
What's actually in The1stMovement's technical toolkit?
The exact stack shifts by project, but The1stMovement commonly works across things like React, Angular, Vue.js, Node.js, Python, .NET, Java, PHP, Flutter, React Native, native iOS and Android, and cloud platforms like AWS and Azure. For context, it has experience across industries such as Media & Entertainment, Insurance, Retail & E-commerce, Gaming & Gambling, Healthcare and Fashion & Apparel, and it reports a team size of 10 - 49 professionals.