Another year crumbles behind us as our databases are pleasantly ripening with new data and clients. A good and exciting year 2009 was, with goals achieved, lessons learned, and ideas hatched for the next twelve months.
Some Major Accomplishments
The projects we undertook in 2009 reflect our dual path business philosophy, which is to focus on development of self sustaining web systems that generate perpetual revenue by either service or product offerings, and development of systems for our clients that solve their business problems. The exciting consulting development projects we completed in 09, allowed us to pursue ventures that might have been otherwise unavailable to us due to time and resource constraints.
At the beginning of the year we won a bid to develop a new website for the Lava Lite people. They’re the guys who make the, and I’m quoting here, Original Lava Lamp. Besides being totally cool (they made us say that), the lamps are an American culture icon; needless to say we were very excited to implement our e-commerce engine and design a user friendly ui. Our relationship has continued to grow and we’re currently working on new features and projects for our goo loving friends.
Much like a little pink poodle that doesn’t have the sense to stop barking at a pit-bull, we are slowly but steadily expanding our typographic web efforts and chewing on the heels of the font industry big players. Our simple, quick, and intuitive e-commerce platform lead to dramatic growth in web sales and our SEO work has exploded relevant web traffic. We redesigned AscenderCorp.com, launched a new version of AscenderFonts.com, and redesigned SearchFreeFonts.com. In 2010 we have even more exciting new font & web technologies coming your way so stay tuned.
We continued and expanded our relationship with Sarpino’s Pizzeria franchise by continuously improving their www.gosarpinos.com website and internal web systems. We implemented an unprecedented customer feedback functionality for all Sarpino’s restaurants which allows customers to submit feedback about their Sarpino’s experience. The content of their feedback is published immediately on the store page of that Sarpino’s restaurant without censorship. The negative feedback is removed from restaurant pages only after satisfactory resolution of customer’s complaint has been reached. We view the Sarpino’s franchise as pioneers in enhancing their customer experience though web technologies.
The successful completion of Sarpino's projects has been steadily enhancing our waist lines, too, as the team has been well supplied with our favorite thin crusts through the development process.
Lowery McDonnell Company approached us to create a new e-commerce system for their educational furniture and supply business. A combined catalog of tens of thousands of items from multiple wholesalers has been interpreted and imported into a new database, allowing a central simplified administration interface for product management. EDI and SOAP links were established with drop ship wholesalers allowing Lowery McDonnell uninterrupted flow from order placement to fulfillment. Custom functionality was developed for LMC that allows budgeting, approval chains, multi vendor integration, robust search, tiered pricing, and more. After a successful and smooth implementation, DevBridge and LMC created a new service that is now focused on licensing and re-branding the existing LMC product catalog and commerce system to other resellers.
A continuous flow of consulting projects and a steady stream of revenue from our partnerships enabled us to invest time and resources into startup projects such as ConceptFeedback.com. Andrew Follett, a marketing professional at AirCycle.com, came up with an idea of a community based website for marketers, designers and web developers who wanted to get actionable feedback on their concepts (look, I draw kittens!). After several brainstorming sessions Andrew and DevBridge formed a partnership. You are probably sensing a trend here. DevBridge would develop the system, and Andrew would focus on the marketing and service aspects. Half a year later and we’re over 5,000 users, a ton of high quality concepts and professionals, and developing a new revision of the system that will expand with premium concepts, paid profiles, a creative marketplace and more.
The Growing Family
Like that doubled headed calf, DevBridge believes that doubling brain capacity is a smart evolutionary move. During 09 our team has grown twofold and now stands twelve strong. Increased capacity means quicker project turnaround time and larger Friday Thai food lunch bills. DevBridge headquarters are still in Chicago, however our development taskforce now spans multiple continents and time zones. We welcome our new members to our family and wish them to love this job as much as we do.
