New @2A real estate site

[pixelranger]

Originally posted by nevil
"wallpapers"!! where do wallpapers come into a pitch! anyway you may be right, but maybe eric might have said something along those lines if that was the case, instead he spoke as if it was a situation that he would never get out of, and as far as paying the bills, I am sure that the profits from the dozens of contracts currently under their belt would secure time to produce some top notch pitches, if they have time to create free demo sites for erains swift 3D product(which I think is great, I to have created some stuff for erain), then surely they have time to create proper pitches. If budget is not sufficient to allow for this kind of activity then 2Advanced have already got themselves into a position where their over heads are too high and they are risking placing themselves in a vulnerable market position. [/B]

I did not say Wallpapers come into a pitch. My point was..working on those things do not pay the bills, clients do.

As to what Eric said, he was speaking to something else, not our current conversation so it cannot be applied. He wasn't making a post as to the state of 2A affairs and company direction.

As far as budget goes, I have no idea what the budget at 2A is, but I do not think ANY company is willing to sit tight and pray for rain so to speak on a couple of huge pitches. I think you missed my example about marchFIRST completly. Budget or not, no company in their right mind is going to sit there and try and push the company to the next level simply by taking time to put together a handful of proposals and not being open to people who are willing to pay for work.

Would you and your small company take 6 months off of client work to try and pitch Nike? Would you even take 2 months off? I sure as heck wouldn't.

[Sybersnake]

i love these threads -- makes the whole thing worth it

[chrisd9]

congrats on the new job, shane... have fun

[pixelranger]

Originally posted by chrisd9
congrats on the new job, shane... have fun

Thanks, I've actually been there for a few months now, but with Mark coming on I guess it was time to announce both of us.

[chrisd9]

good deal...

your portfolio slightly expands beyond what 2a provides (ie dvd menus) is 2advanced planning on doing some work along these lines at all? or will you continue with free-lance, maybe doing things such as these on your own.

[k7m7t]

i am in awe...

All the greatest designers discussing in one obscure forum
{
Pixel Ranger
2advanced
Theory 7
}
now if only <B>egomedia</B> decided to join, now wouldnt that be something. lol

Well, I like the site EJ but i must say to all the FK goers, if you wanted to make the big bucks you are in the wrong business.

[aversion]

Originally posted by k7m7t
i am in awe...

All the greatest designers discussing in one obscure forum
{
Pixel Ranger
2advanced
Theory 7
}
now if only <B>egomedia</B> decided to join, now wouldnt that be something. lol

obscure forum?? Pah! you're fired!

someone from egomedia used to post here now and again, his name was vitaly unclickable I think, haven't seen him around for a while though.

[Johnny Shiro]

Web-Development is the wrong biz for money you mean ? Dunno how people is in your country, but here in norway i can get angry on how much people are willing to pay lol !!

You can easily get up to 250$ bucks for a plain html site, and from 500$ for a more flash based site. None of them are dynamic, so they don't give theyre visitors a damn thing except info... clients today.. BAH !

[gasbag15]

I don't think he's reading this thread anymore..

[Johnny Shiro]

Oh i bet when the time is right, and enough bad comments have been made, me and the rest will probably get a lesson trough mechanical modules trough text

[nevil]

Originally posted by pixelranger

Originally posted by nevil
"wallpapers"!! where do wallpapers come into a pitch! anyway you may be right, but maybe eric might have said something along those lines if that was the case, instead he spoke as if it was a situation that he would never get out of, and as far as paying the bills, I am sure that the profits from the dozens of contracts currently under their belt would secure time to produce some top notch pitches, if they have time to create free demo sites for erains swift 3D product(which I think is great, I to have created some stuff for erain), then surely they have time to create proper pitches. If budget is not sufficient to allow for this kind of activity then 2Advanced have already got themselves into a position where their over heads are too high and they are risking placing themselves in a vulnerable market position.

I did not say Wallpapers come into a pitch. My point was..working on those things do not pay the bills, clients do.

As to what Eric said, he was speaking to something else, not our current conversation so it cannot be applied. He wasn't making a post as to the state of 2A affairs and company direction.

As far as budget goes, I have no idea what the budget at 2A is, but I do not think ANY company is willing to sit tight and pray for rain so to speak on a couple of huge pitches. I think you missed my example about marchFIRST completly. Budget or not, no company in their right mind is going to sit there and try and push the company to the next level simply by taking time to put together a handful of proposals and not being open to people who are willing to pay for work.

Would you and your small company take 6 months off of client work to try and pitch Nike? Would you even take 2 months off? I sure as heck wouldn't. [/B]

Im sorry but not all companies scrape about taking every project they can to pay the bills, some companies have good business plans and practices which allow them the flexibility and space to expand and a proffesional web agency in england, for example agency.com or bluemarble will put a huge amount of time and effort into pitches, I think you are miss lead by what pitches are, this doesn't mean randomly boming companies with demos and "we are the best company to do the job for you", for example when the BBC's website renewal comes up several of the big agencies will prepare for this, doing research on what they are looking for, who is the best person to present the pitch to, etc, etc, not just posting of an email with a demo.

If a company wins one of these contracts the financial gain would pay for the entire portfolio of 2Advances work., so yes companies do take time to prepare these kind of pitches.

As far as refusing work, this is essential to improving your business, If that is the goal, ok you could keep a few designers working on the smaller projects, but for how long as a business will this be efficients and cost effective, not long.

I worked for a company as a flash designer who extensively researched 10 carefully chosen companies and prepared umbelievably pitches to present to each, the level of work committed gauranteed their success in winning contracts, and each was worth over £1,000,000, so do you still think that "NO company will sit there preparing pitches/proposals", they also refused work from smaller clients.

Lastly! you asked if me and my small company would take time off to pitch to clients, firstly I did not say that 2a should take 6 months of, secondly I have refused dozens of contracts over the last 2 years so that I can concentrate on work that I believe in, to take Theory7 to the next level I have taken 6 months off to develop the flash store and refused work during this time, it may not be making any money while it's in development but this is the only way to advance the company. And by keeping my overheads to a minimum I am able to afford this time.

[coolmilo]

very cool, i like it very much

[Sybersnake]

Originally posted by Johnny Shiro
Web-Development is the wrong biz for money you mean ? Dunno how people is in your country, but here in norway i can get angry on how much people are willing to pay lol !!

You can easily get up to 250$ bucks for a plain html site, and from 500$ for a more flash based site. None of them are dynamic, so they don't give theyre visitors a damn thing except info... clients today.. BAH !

that sucks for you, i usually make 5k per project. (small business)

[tpnovak]

Nevil,

Normally, I completely agree with what you have to say, however, in this instance I would have to say that you are putting a little too much business theory in front of economic realities.

Im sorry but not all companies scrape about taking every project they can to pay the bills, some companies have good business plans and practices which allow them the flexibility and space to expand and a proffesional web agency in england, for example agency.com or bluemarble will put a huge amount of time and effort into pitches, I think you are miss lead by what pitches are, this doesn't mean randomly boming companies with demos and "we are the best company to do the job for you", for example when the BBC's website renewal comes up several of the big agencies will prepare for this, doing research on what they are looking for, who is the best person to present the pitch to, etc, etc, not just posting of an email with a demo.

All small companies have one primary responsibility, and that is to Cash Flow. Payroll is my major concern, day after day. We have the fortunate situation of being able to say that we have never had to "layoff" a single employee here and have significant cash reserves just in case, and as such we want to keep things this way. So at the end of the day, if the issue is between taking on another project similar to the 2A Style vs laying people off and/or depleting reserves... I think the decision is quite simple.

Also, Agency.com is a bad example to use here. They were 1500+ people and listed on the Nasdaq at one time (ACOM was the old ticker before delisting), now they are stuggling each day for survival. In their entire history as a public company, I believe there was only one fiscal quarter that they had reached negligable profitability (4 cents per share I think it was). Sad.

For that matter, look at the industry as a whole for a moment. Isn't it dismaying that as of today not a single Tier-One design company has ever proven our business model? Razorfish, Sapient, Agency, Organic, Proxicom, Tanning, IXL, US Interactive, March First, etc... All on the verge of extinction or already dead. Not to mention many of the smaller companies we thought would never implode: Dennis Interactive, Deepend, Kioken?

If a company wins one of these contracts the financial gain would pay for the entire portfolio of 2Advances work., so yes companies do take time to prepare these kind of pitches.

As far as refusing work, this is essential to improving your business, If that is the goal, ok you could keep a few designers working on the smaller projects, but for how long as a business will this be efficients and cost effective, not long.

In my opinion, the "pitch the big dogs" theory of business is the reason the larger firms ended up in so much trouble. The problem is that as you go for the larger projects you end up in competition with the Ad Agency giants (JWT, Chiat Day, Y&R, Saatchi, etc)... Those that have 75 years+ of experience, cash reserves for a whole lot of staying power, and can offer a boat load of services beyond the web/dev/interactive work. When you look at larger projects, they are for all intents and purposes multifaceted campaigns; the web/dev work is only a portion of the whole budget.

I worked for a company as a flash designer who extensively researched 10 carefully chosen companies and prepared umbelievably pitches to present to each, the level of work committed gauranteed their success in winning contracts, and each was worth over £1,000,000, so do you still think that "NO company will sit there preparing pitches/proposals", they also refused work from smaller clients.

Lastly! you asked if me and my small company would take time off to pitch to clients, firstly I did not say that 2a should take 6 months of, secondly I have refused dozens of contracts over the last 2 years so that I can concentrate on work that I believe in, to take Theory7 to the next level I have taken 6 months off to develop the flash store and refused work during this time, it may not be making any money while it's in development but this is the only way to advance the company. And by keeping my overheads to a minimum I am able to afford this time.

Alas, it really comes down to the business model. We could go back and forth on the value of the "pitch" all day long. My philosophy has always been: "A bird in the hand..." In other words, there's always the potential of doing the cold pitch, but when you have 300+ unsolicited sales inquires a month coming through the door... Why take the revenue hit?

Of course recurring revenue would be the best model, and I completely respect any hell you may have gone through when you started selling source code off Theory7... But, this is all the nature of business. You test ideas and concepts, go with what works best and spike the failures. It's a gamble to take X months off for reaching the next level... If it works for your company... Wonderful. However, as I said above, my number one concern is our team and their families. I will be the first to vote away any decisions which put our people at risk.

On another note, for those reading Eric's statement. He wasn't trying to drive home the message that he doesn't want to hear negative feedback. The real frustration comes from the negative assessments which are made time and again without any thought to the real business issues going on behind the scenes. Statements like, "Why are there so many similarities from 2A project to 2A project". Well, it because thats what the clients are buying. It's fun to sit around and talk about turning away $100K projects because clients aren't listening to our advice... But in the end, if it means taking a hit in your business to do so... I would really suggest revisiting your "principles".

[zooler]

Originally posted by tpnovak
Nevil,

Normally, I completely agree with what you have to say, however, in this instance I would have to say that you are putting a little too much business theory in front of economic realities.

Im sorry but not all companies scrape about taking every project they can to pay the bills, some companies have good business plans and practices which allow them the flexibility and space to expand and a proffesional web agency in england, for example agency.com or bluemarble will put a huge amount of time and effort into pitches, I think you are miss lead by what pitches are, this doesn't mean randomly boming companies with demos and "we are the best company to do the job for you", for example when the BBC's website renewal comes up several of the big agencies will prepare for this, doing research on what they are looking for, who is the best person to present the pitch to, etc, etc, not just posting of an email with a demo.

All small companies have one primary responsibility, and that is to Cash Flow. Payroll is my major concern, day after day. We have the fortunate situation of being able to say that we have never had to "layoff" a single employee here and have significant cash reserves just in case, and as such we want to keep things this way. So at the end of the day, if the issue is between taking on another project similar to the 2A Style vs laying people off and/or depleting reserves... I think the decision is quite simple.

Also, Agency.com is a bad example to use here. They were 1500+ people and listed on the Nasdaq at one time (ACOM was the old ticker before delisting), now they are stuggling each day for survival. In their entire history as a public company, I believe there was only one fiscal quarter that they had reached negligable profitability (4 cents per share I think it was). Sad.

For that matter, look at the industry as a whole for a moment. Isn't it dismaying that as of today not a single Tier-One design company has ever proven our business model? Razorfish, Sapient, Agency, Organic, Proxicom, Tanning, IXL, US Interactive, March First, etc... All on the verge of extinction or already dead. Not to mention many of the smaller companies we thought would never implode: Dennis Interactive, Deepend, Kioken?

If a company wins one of these contracts the financial gain would pay for the entire portfolio of 2Advances work., so yes companies do take time to prepare these kind of pitches.

As far as refusing work, this is essential to improving your business, If that is the goal, ok you could keep a few designers working on the smaller projects, but for how long as a business will this be efficients and cost effective, not long.

In my opinion, the "pitch the big dogs" theory of business is the reason the larger firms ended up in so much trouble. The problem is that as you go for the larger projects you end up in competition with the Ad Agency giants (JWT, Chiat Day, Y&R, Saatchi, etc)... Those that have 75 years+ of experience, cash reserves for a whole lot of staying power, and can offer a boat load of services beyond the web/dev/interactive work. When you look at larger projects, they are for all intents and purposes multifaceted campaigns; the web/dev work is only a portion of the whole budget.

I worked for a company as a flash designer who extensively researched 10 carefully chosen companies and prepared umbelievably pitches to present to each, the level of work committed gauranteed their success in winning contracts, and each was worth over £1,000,000, so do you still think that "NO company will sit there preparing pitches/proposals", they also refused work from smaller clients.

Lastly! you asked if me and my small company would take time off to pitch to clients, firstly I did not say that 2a should take 6 months of, secondly I have refused dozens of contracts over the last 2 years so that I can concentrate on work that I believe in, to take Theory7 to the next level I have taken 6 months off to develop the flash store and refused work during this time, it may not be making any money while it's in development but this is the only way to advance the company. And by keeping my overheads to a minimum I am able to afford this time.

Alas, it really comes down to the business model. We could go back and forth on the value of the "pitch" all day long. My philosophy has always been: "A bird in the hand..." In other words, there's always the potential of doing the cold pitch, but when you have 300+ unsolicited sales inquires a month coming through the door... Why take the revenue hit?

Of course recurring revenue would be the best model, and I completely respect any hell you may have gone through when you started selling source code off Theory7... But, this is all the nature of business. You test ideas and concepts, go with what works best and spike the failures. It's a gamble to take X months off for reaching the next level... If it works for your company... Wonderful. However, as I said above, my number one concern is our team and their families. I will be the first to vote away any decisions which put our people at risk.

On another note, for those reading Eric's statement. He wasn't trying to drive home the message that he doesn't want to hear negative feedback. The real frustration comes from the negative assessments which are made time and again without any thought to the real business issues going on behind the scenes. Statements like, "Why are there so many similarities from 2A project to 2A project". Well, it because thats what the clients are buying. It's fun to sit around and talk about turning away $100K projects because clients aren't listening to our advice... But in the end, if it means taking a hit in your business to do so... I would really suggest revisiting your "principles".

Tony,
I dont think you need to justify to the community these decsions you guys make. The fact is you are the most well know flash agency, and that comes with the hardest critisism. I for one critisize a lot of things. I think 2advanced work is amazing and among my favourites but action speaks louder than words. 2advanced has produced the same thing over and over again. You do not have to defend it. Its your style that 2a has developed. The entire client talk here between you and the theory7 guy is getting out of focus in some way and its not the place to discuss this publically especially for 2a's image. People are tired of the same thing 2a is producing but they do not have the right to complain about this. instead they should broaden their horizons and put pressure on other companies simialr to 2a to produce another style successfully. I really really admire the work of 2a but i dont see any reality in this client talk to justify a design company producing the same thing day in day out. I think you should just say, "its our style" "clients pay for it" and put a full stop after it.
respect to your team.

[aversion]

I welcome discussions like this and the comments from tony, nevil and shane. I don't think it's necessarily a metter of defending business practices, rather just discussing them and helping a lot of people here realise just what goes on behind the scenes.

[Sybersnake]

Design companies are out there todo what? Make Money! And do it anyway they can. Business Golden Rule "The customer is always right" 2a isn't there to make the designers of the world go "wow" ,but to make money, give jobs, and provide a creative place where its employees can express themselves. Im all for putting the future of the company ahead of nearly everything else.

[perozo]

i declare this thread:

"the thread of the month".

how much talent involved. this is great. keep talking

just a thought.

[Sybersnake]

Originally posted by perozo
i declare this thread:

"the thread of the month".

how much talent involved. this is great. keep talking

just a thought.

ok.. well.. i never would of thought.. OWW *thought too much*

[Sybersnake]

Originally posted by Sybersnake
Design companies are out there todo what? Make Money! And do it anyway they can. Business Golden Rule "The customer is always right" 2a isn't there to make the designers of the world go "wow" ,but to make money, give jobs, and provide a creative place where its employees can express themselves. Im all for putting the future of the company ahead of nearly everything else.

Another thought:

the only thing above the company is the employees, bc w/out them, where would the company be?