Biz Startz ~> Biz 'Treps ~> Next Article (Right On Target With Marketing)
By Kai Fawn Welker
Beep, beep, beep!!!
“It’s not already three,” you groan, smashing your clock for the fifth time
this week. You yawn, stretch, and pad out to the kitchen, where you leave your Pop Tart in the
microwave too long and end up with a new flavor — charred. Rectangular piece of coal in hand, you
head for your office (right next to the bedroom, of course), and plop down at the desk. Your desk
calendar shows a meeting in ten minutes…Ten minutes!? Better get ready — everyone else is probably
on the way.
The computer’s already on, so that’s out of the way. One by one, the room fills
up with your staff. “All right, everyone, let’s get started,” you type, tugging at those pajama
bottoms that keep slipping.
No way! Holding meetings at 3 a.m., online and in pajamas? Who is this too-lucky-for-his-own-good ‘trep? He’s 19, he’s the founder and owner of Sparkart (www.sparkart.com), an up-and-coming Web design company, and he’s got a grip on the way business is moving in the future.
Setting
off Sparks
“I had absolutely no start-up costs,” says Naveen. “There was no brick and
mortar office space to pay for, and I do all of my recruiting online.”
To keep his costs down and his team creative, Naveen doesn’t keep a staff on
salary. All of his employees are contractors, which means they have more of a chance to pick their
projects. Since he recruits online, that also means they might not even be in the same state as the
company. In fact, only one of Naveen’s contractors lives in California. He has designers in
Virginia, Oregon, and even Canada.
While they may not be in the same office, each is an important member of the Sparkart team. “We have online meetings using Internet Relay Chat all the time, and everyone on the team OKs any design before it’s given to a client,” says Naveen. “We’ve been hoping to have a chance for everyone to meet face-to-face, but there hasn’t been a break yet to say, ‘Oh, we have no clients this week, so let’s go down and have a meeting.’ Sparkart grows aggressively, and everyone works very closely to keep that going.”
Digital Getdown
Sparkart’s teamwork really shows in their sites, which feature a lot of
animation and sharp, awesome design work. The company tries to go below the client’s surface to
provide the perfect design for each contract. This helps them to add a lot of depth to the sites
they produce, but it also means Naveen does a lot of legwork before the designs are even started.
“We do a lot of research on our clients’ behalf,” Naveen says. “A lot of times
we do research without even talking to the client — we look at their offices, we look at their
industry, and we check out their competition. Some companies end up wanting to change the look of
all of their marketing material when they see our designs.”
Naveen calls this “identity design,” and it’s part of the reason Sparkart has been awarded phat contracts like OrderSmart.com, who chose them out of 120 other bidders. “We try to find what I call the ‘soul’ of the company — and that includes the company’s culture as well as their demographics and product line,” he says.
Super Service
Adding to their artful design is their kickin’ customer service. The Sparkart
team created an “extranet,” which is a password-protected site where each client can access previews
of their designs and give feedback.
“If a client sends a suggestion through the extranet, we can revise their
design within 24 hours. It’s an interactive experience,” says Naveen. It also lets Sparkart work
completely digitally — no costs for paper printouts.
His business model is boss, his low costs are kickin’, and his designs are
divine. But Naveen’s greatest accomplishment is putting together a staff that’s dedicated enough to
work across the country for clients they’ll never meet. In return, his designers get to do what most
people only dream about.
“Everyone on staff loves to do what they do, and when they join Sparkart, they get paid to do that,” says Naveen. “It’s taken a long time to set up, but it’s really paid off.”
Hard-Knock Biz
Sure, there are plenty of success stories in business, but not many people want
to tell you the dirty truth — businesses can fail. They fail all the time. Naveen learned this
during his first year at Purdue University when his first business, Pure Gaming Network, took a ton
of effort and only paid in pennies.
“I was really into video games, so I thought I would start my own E-zine to
review games and make money from advertising. It was the classic dot com,” he says.
The site developed into a one-stop gaming source, but Naveen was the only one
doing any work. “We had a lot of staff problems — people weren’t writing their reviews on time,” he
says. “I felt like I was wasting time, and things just weren’t fun anymore.”
While the site lives on at puregaming.net, Naveen left both the operation and Purdue. He used the first company as a learning experience — and his new-found biz smarts as a springboard for Sparkart.
Site Seeing?
Check out some of Sparkart’s latest designs!