Why we gave up web design after 10 successful years

Ten years ago, I started up a business intended to build up a web-design company. We grew little by little along the ten years. After ten years of hard work that paid off, our growth was seen to be much significant than what we were initially. Finally, I have been able to get rid of it.

Don’t get me wrong - we had accomplished tons of good work. We had so much fun, and together we stepped into success. We had over 800 clients and 12 full-time employees with us. Building up as the largest organization in our city, we have even worked with many of the wealthiest clients, high quality projects, and we also earned some profits as well.

However, after reaching the peak, I have decided to step down and let it all go. At the beginning of this year, we left all the other works behind and we launched some products on our own. And I have never been any happier with this.

So the reason is that,

Web design isn’t all bad

The needs of clients were varying. Web designing field isn’t without its benefits. And the most important thing is that you will always be able to learn new things in web designing. Life is all about learning while you are living, isn’t it?

Web designing industry is comical and easy to enter too. All you need is a computer, internet access and time, and you are off to begin. There are lots of demands for the cheap work in the beginning, you can do it at a fair rate if it is a good work.

I began without a computer at my first company when I was still a fresh graduate with RM200 of cash-in-hand. I borrowed a Sony Vaio laptop from Dave J, my ex-boss whom I was working for as part time during my college time. In the beginning, it was tough but after that we improved and doubled the size annually. Our effort was rewarded as we grew step by step, and all our work turned into better work. Unfortunately, our success does not last long.

Your fate is sealed

If you get a creative work from a client, they deserve your valuable time.

I used to think that I am an entrepreneur of a web designing company. But, the truth was, our bosses were the clients whereas we were like their slaves of their whim. Of course, we did meet and work with amazing and wonderful clients, but we also had some repressive, misguided and flat-out bonkers too. I’ll be honest: they are not the ones that I am expecting to come.

Most of the web designers need to work with their clients constantly to keep them satisfied. The reason is that unsatisfied customers won’t pay their bill. A web design organization that pisses off their clients won’t stay in business for long, not even close to make them happy as well.

At certain times, I have fired some clients, but it’s not fair to do business with clients who disagree with us, in a suspect that I shouldn’t take on work probably, and deal with people who wish you wouldn’t. As the alternative is so worse, step by step, your ideas for practicality diminished.

But ultimately, your principles grow thin.

Not a great business

When it comes to earning money in web designing field, it is a bit tricky and difficult. It’s a decent nourishment, but poor in investing money. In other words, web designing allows you to learn, but do not really allow you to earn.

Actually, you cannot differentiate yourself from the beginners. No one in the web design organization owns 0.01% in the market. We have always given a fixed rate to our customers. Even if the project is a brilliant success, our rates will still be the same. On top of that, you just won yourself more orders.

It is very important to understand that the background of the field differs from many other businesses. For example, if you sell a top selling solar-powered torch, the profit gained from it is all yours. And the destiny of your life too. You can select any brand, any strategy that fits to change your product. If you become the best, then the rewards are boundless. However with web design, you approximately earned yourself more, a slightly better work. Most web designers do not have much time to spend on their own websites.

The limits of size and location

All the successful organizations tend to be located in the big cities due to the saturated population. If you are a magnificent designer but you are based in a remote and rural place, you are most likely to spend a much difficult time than a mediocre designer in big city.

We used to have customers from many Asian countries, for instance Singapore, Australia, Thailand and even China. However, after about 8 years, our location began to limit us. It became the reason to be so difficult to continue service them all. More remote customers are more expensive to attend to, so your return becomes lower. I had to compete against the local web design organizations who have already been rooted in those countries. Let us put ourselves in the customer’s shoes. If you are the customer, will you purposely contact some overseas company just to design a web page?

Well, of course we can move or expand the business, but it does not make any economic sense for us. If we were moving, what about the current staff that we were having? Bringing them along requires much higher expenses because the staff will not follow voluntarily if the wages are not high enough. In this case, we’d spend our opulence to lose all the advantages like our staff, network of referrers and our name.

Sacrifice Your Own Destiny

The ability to transform the world into a better one is what I love the most about businesses. To me, I felt one of the greatest civilizations is that in a world where two guys discovered Google in a garage, creating boundless benefits to the world and profits for their efforts.

All I want was to make the biggest difference I can with my life, and I couldn’t attain this with a web design organization. No matter what you do that thing is that you are working for someone else. You can’t surrender quietly, because you know that it is your passion. From here, I have learnt that if it is meant for me, I won’t have to beg for it as I will never have to sacrifice my dignity for my destiny.

So, what did we do?

4 years ago, we started to separate the business into a web design division and a software division, and supply those separate brands. We had our first product which is called “Operion Cloud Hosted CMS”. For at least 5 years that I could recall, I started to leave the web design field step by step and little by little.

The drawback I made was continuing to be a web design monster, whilst trying to get my product side up and running during my leisure time. Despite all others, web design occupies 90% of my attention and leisure time.

When there was an inflation in 2015, our sales were severely hit, and it took only a few minutes for all our efforts to go in vain and the financial state that put us in. Our products kept us in afloat but our web design dominated all of our time.

It’s too early to know that this decision will pay off right now. We feel like a startup all over again. For ourselves we have an answer for that, and that it is perfect and great.

Now a new life begins in 2018… The #autobot