Whatever Makes You Click
The web has been expanding, and Nicky Morrogh has been watching and learning. When he joined the two founding partners of Webmedia in 2000, online marketing was in its infancy.
Nicky had recently graduated from UCC with all the pros and cons of an Arts degree. “I was fairly well educated but not very employable,” he recalls with a smile. “ I didn’t want to go down the standard job route and thought I’d have a go myself.” Webmedia had harnessed the technology behind 360-degree photography, developing the virtual tours much loved by The Irish Times, Myhome.ie, property developers, and online travel shoppers everywhere.
“It was an edge we had over other agencies,” says Nicky. “Nobody else was doing it, so it was easy to get in the door and develop the relationship from there.” In the last seven years the capacity, speed and volume of web content have boomed, offering businesses ever more sophisticated marketing tools to satisfy customers and optimise their online sales. Massive revenues have followed. Webmedia kept abreast. Constantly exchanging ideas with customers and contacts, they built up an impressive client list and a reputation for resourcefulness and considered solutions for online sales strategies. “Knocking on doors has never been a problem because we’ve always tried to bring something new to our clients” says Nicky. They delivered the first video footage from the Big Brother house to Channel 4’s website in 2001, helped sell-out the premium boxes in Croke Park for the GAA, and provided virtual tours around millions of euros of property at home and abroad. They opened eyes.
The company had a natural affinity with the tourism sector, and got a break in 2004 when they won a contract to supply a reservations system to the popular Jameson & Midleton Distillery Visitor Centres. Nicky’s brother Dominic, an electrical engineer, returned from the US to develop the system. Their solution was attractive and simple for visitors to use, but also served as a management system for the client, who could manage all aspects of their business through an easy to use web interface. A volley of confirmation emails now became redundant (and who doesn’t love a lighter inbox), cumbersome diaries were discarded, and most importantly, visitor numbers grew dramatically. The company began to expand in two different directions. The potential for their real-time reservation systems in the tourism industry was clear, while at the same time the demand for online services was also growing.
A second company, Visrez, (Visitor Reservations) was established to focus on software, while Webmedia continued to focus on web development and marketing. From their South William Street HQ they now supply reservation systems and provide marketing services to an impressive list of clients. Dublin City Enterprise Board (DCEB) came on the scene just as things started to happen. Nicky’s original partners had other interests and talks began about buying them out. It was a tough time for all involved. “The business was growing but things were getting messy we needed someone to talk to” Nicky explains.
“The big plus for us with DCEB were the contacts. They assigned us a mentor, and this guy Brian Davitt was great. “We were an unusual case for DCEB because we weren’t a start up: we were in transition. Brian’s background was advertising and he called it straight from the beginning. Brian put us in touch with another DCEB mentor, Paddy Finnegan, an accountant who took a shine to us, and has been absolutely brilliant. That was about 18 months ago and he’s really whipped things into shape. He drops by the office regularly and gets straight to work. He’s helped us enormously, and their experience and expertise have saved us a fortune.”
DCEB also invested €70,000 in the business in October 2007 through Redeemable Preference Shares. With a new clarity of purpose, Nicky, Dominic and their impressively cosmopolitan staff will undoubtedly continue to create new solutions to increase revenues and efficiencies for their clients. Their hard work and dedication has won them high praise from many happy customers.
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