This month, Disking turned 39. Have you known us from the early days, in Farnham, where we were the place to buy a PC. If you knew us even earlier still, you might remember a certain floppy disk with “banana” on it. And if you know us today, we’re the team keeping your IT running, your data secure and your business connected.
That ever-evolving feeling, all wrapped up in one continuous business, is exactly what we want to celebrate. We haven’t survived nearly four decades in technology by standing still, but by reinventing ourselves, again and again, just ahead of the market.
It started with a floppy disk
In 1987, the Smith family founded Disking International as a mail order business, supplying our Banana branded floppy disks to retailers across the UK, and even briefly to Florida. It’s a long way from managed cyber security, but the essential idea was the same then as it is now: businesses need reliable technology supplies from a supplier who actually delivers.
When the floppy disk era faded, plenty of companies built around that technology simply faded with it, but Disking didn’t. We spotted the growing PC market and launched the PC Pieces range of peripherals, which found its way onto the shelves of hundreds of retailers, including John Lewis and W.H. Smith.
Reinvention number two: retail
By 1998 we’d branched out again, opening our first Disking Computers store in Farnham and growing across Surrey, West Sussex and Hampshire. For years, our shops were where local homes and businesses came for computers, repairs and advice. That high street presence taught us something we still lean on daily: how to explain technology to someone who hasn’t got time for jargon, and how to look after hardware from the moment it arrives to the moment it’s retired.
Reinvention number three: from reactive to managed
The retail world changed, and so did our clients’ needs. Businesses were no longer asking “can you fix my computer?” but “can you look after all of our IT, before things go wrong?”. So we became a fully managed IT provider: proactive support, cyber security, cloud, connectivity and hardware under one roof. The repair counter instinct never left us, it simply grew up. We still understand hardware in a way many managed service providers never had to learn, because we grew from supplying and fixing it.
More recently, that side of the business has been given a new home too. In 2021 we invested in modernising our stores, and as demand for repairs and upgrades became central to our services, we created streamlined workspaces and a better environment for our team.
Reinvention number four: software
In 2025 we launched Disking Technologies (UK) Limited, our subsidiary developing Central ERP. It’s our newest chapter, and arguably the boldest: after decades of supporting other people’s systems, we built our own platform, shaped by everything we’ve learned about how businesses actually run. From supplying software on disks to writing it, that’s quite a 38-year round trip.
The things that haven’t changed
Here’s the part we’re proudest of though…. Across every reinvention, three things have stayed exactly the same:
We’ve never sold the business. In a sector where most of our larger competitors have been bought, merged or backed by private equity over the past few years, Disking remains family-owned. The people managing your IT are the same people who will still be here in five years.
We’ve never taken outside investment. Every stage of growth has been funded from the last one. That means decisions are made locally, by the people who know your account, not by a head office three acquisitions removed.
We’ve never stopped being the same company. Different products, different decades, same approach: know your stuff, look after people properly, and be honest about what they need, even when that means recommending less.
Thank you for your support! Let’s Celebrate 🎉
39 years of Disking! Can you believe we’re older than the internet as most people know it? We feel like we’re only getting started. To every customer who bought a box of Banana disks in 1987, walked into a Disking store in the 2000s, or trusts us with their IT today: thank you for being part of the story.
Here’s to chapter five. We’re already working on it.
