Business Detail

With a 13 year history, the track record of this company has been proven and the reputation has been firmly established. It could continue to operate in its current incarnation, and provide a good return for its owner for the foreseeable future. However, much more growth potential exists. What this company does - and how it does it - could be replicated across multiple client service teams, each mirroring its current capacity. In addition, other compatible products and services not currently offered could be 'up-sold' or bundled to a captive audience (such as integration, intranet development, SEO services, online marketing campaigns and other related software).

However, this owner does not have the senior management in place to enact such a growth plan. Locating and retaining top production talent has also been a challenge, making it difficult to proceed with confidence. As such, this firm has remained a small specialty boutique, with little urgency to expand beyond its current ''comfort zone.''

This company is a full-service, website consulting, design, development and hosting company based in the North East and was founded in 1996. It is a well-respected and established boutique studio, known for its excellent design, attention to detail, long-term customer partnerships and overall value proposition. Although they work with clients across a number of industries, it is most known for a well-developed vertical with law firms and law-related industries. The majority of major law firm CMO's - particularly the big global firms - are familiar with or know of this company. Most will provide RFP's when going to bid on a new firm website.

This company employs 7 full-time employees with enough workflow to regularly employ 4 additional freelancers. All are design, project management or programming professionals. Business management and accounting responsibilities are provided through an outsourced service. The company has been consistently in-demand for the past several years and producing at capacity for its size and composition almost without interruption, often turning away work. This continues currently, despite the downturn in the economy. The company has never actively marketed or advertised itself. The company is in the black every year, holds at least enough cash for at least two to three full months of expenses in advance, carries no debt, has strong receivables from good payers, and pays taxes with a very conservative low-risk mindset.

Seeking Growth Through Partner Acquisition:
The owner of this company could raise the capital needed on its own to pursue a homegrown growth strategy. Capital is not the obstacle... it is the technical infrastructure and human capital needed to create and run a larger organization that is most needed. As such, the best route towards reaching its ultimate potential comes by being acquired by the right partner. The right partner would be a web design and development company - or a company with such a business unit - that is substantially larger than this firm, and possessing the following attributes:

• 1: A focus on high-quality custom web application development products
• 2: Excellent design characteristics across all, and attention to pixel-perfect detail
• 3: An agency mindset (as opposed to an IT mindset) that is focused on saying ''yes" to the demands of demanding clients and delivering results
• 4: Possesses additional products and services that could be sold to this company's clients
• 5: Committed to flexible web technologies that can be modified as needed over time
• 6: Skilled developers who are good problem solvers and can maintain and modify old ''bad'' legacy code just as easily as new best-practice ''good'' code
• 7: Experienced, intelligent web-specific consultants and client service professionals who thoroughly understand all aspect of the web development process
• 8: A tier-1 hosting infrastructure and server management operation
• 9: Larger scale systems already in place for accounting, billing, project management
  

Such a partner would be best suited to work with this firm's team leaders to leverage, adapt, improve, combine talents, and push forward from the current level to something more substantial ... without taking steps backward. The elimination of duplicative resources, such as hosting infrastructure, accounting and billing systems would immediately improve the bottom line on the this operation.