Hi, we're 8wire digital
Kiwi born and Canadian honed, we love what we do, and where we get to work. We bring a keen sense of business and technical experience, humble confidence, practicality, and solid values.
You get a team of capable, creative problem solvers who work hard, stay curious, and don’t take themselves too seriously.
We’re at our best when things are complicated because we bring them down to something simple, sensible and stress-free.
We believe better decisions come from listening, learning, and thinking things through, before figuring out and implementing the best outcome.
Our Values
We’re Grounded
As Kiwi/Canadians, common sense is in our bones, fluff is not. We’re practical, honest, focused, and smart. Without the ego.
Teamwork
Collaborating with our clients and learning their industry is our favourite part of the process.
Follow-Through
We show up and we see it through. We enjoy the simpler steps and we’re always up for a challenge.
Keep Calm
We don’t bend in a crisis. And we’ve seen some doozies.
Straight Talking Kiwis
The no fluff thing is real. We’re good at tough conversations because we’re plainspoken and polite.
Quietly Confident Canadians
Every successful project is another knotch of confidence and a quiet pat on the back.
What the heck is 8wire?
The term “number 8 wire” originally referred to a specific gauge of fencing wire, widely used in New Zealand. Farmers found countless uses for it, leveraging its versatility to repair broken equipment and create makeshift solutions to everyday problems. Over time, it has come to represent a broader cultural ethos of creativity, innovation, adaptability, and problem-solving.
8wire symbolizes the innovative and entrepreneurial spirit highlighting our ability to think outside the box and find practical solutions in challenging situations. Combine this with the Canadian character, culture, and values that consistently earn admiration around the world, and you have 8wire digital, a company with creativity, innovation, humble confidence and a wicked sense of humour. A great partner to deliver your digital needs.
And if you totally want to nerd out, there are 8 wires in the cat 6 cable that connects the interwebs to the world. Now you know.
Our Team
Tim Hassed
Tim is our strategy guy, and spends his days turning chaos into roadmaps, ideas into results, and problems into “that’s genius” solutions. We call him “the handrail”, for his ability to lead every client and project to success with clarity and calm confidence.
Growing up in New Zealand, he was surrounded by number 8 wire and a curiosity to understand how things worked. This naturally led to him building all sorts of things and starting his first business at age 12.
He led emerging market sales for NZ Breweries before moving to the UK to help design and install an intranet for the Royal Navy. Canada called at the start of the internet boom in 1999 where he led the rollout of web and commerce projects for some of Canada’s top companies.
Tim has his eye on the customer, his passion for business and an ability to cut through the noise. This results in clear, concise, digital strategies that help businesses grow and become more efficient and effective.
He’s always got a personal project on the go as well as a passion for snowboarding and motorbikes that keeps him balanced.
Kat Geismar
Kat grew up in NZ then made her way home to Canada after some stops in South America, Europe, and Yukon (the best of the best in Canada).
After a corporate stint in London’s banking world, Kat decided she would be on the high train to loop-ville if she stayed in such a non creative schtick. She moved to BC, enrolled at UBC, and learned a little of digital’s everything with a focus on the mechanics of bringing a good platform together. She and a pal built the UBC continuing studies website and that project became the foundation for a small but cheeky digital agency. It also set the tone for how Kat works.
Kat is the glue, bringing research, strategy, design, content, and dev to solve problems and create cool things. She also helps the client enjoy the process with a relaxed tone, some stellar communication skills and a wicked worth ethic.
She asks the right questions early, keeps scope and quality in check, and makes sure the end product is right, for users, clients, and the crew maintaining it after launch.
Extended Talent
We work with an exceptionally talented team of seasoned professionals who’ve been on both the client and agency side. They know what works and what doesn’t.
We stay lean, working with highly qualified people without unnecessary management layers, saving you time and budget with direct access to the people doing the work.
We don’t off-shore or hand tasks to juniors. Your business needs come first, and we match every project with the right specialists from our network of 25+ expert contractors, not whoever happens to be “on the bench.” There is no ‘B’ team here. Who you meet is who you work with.
We are experienced in all current web technologies: PHP, Javascript, CSS, Node, React, Kubernetes, Microservices, FAAS, IAAC, Content Management (WordPress, Craft, Contentstack, Payload). And yeah, we still speak human.
Our goal is to deliver high impact projects with a practical, common sense approach, helping our clients get the digital they need with a team they can trust.