Happy 2011 everyone.

What a year 2010 has been - a struggle for some and a year of some big changes for many.
The global financial crisis has seen some massive reverberations through many countries and small local communities, including New Zealand.

The recession that we are supposedly now emerging from has seen many businesses either fold under the pressure of a drastically reduced cash flow, or change the way in which they do business.

Locally, in somewhat isolated Nelson at the top of the minimally populated South Island of New Zealand, the recession has certainly been hard for the retail sector of the community. Tourism has also been impacted by the financial crisis and one would expect that by the end of this tourist season, there will be some more changes to how businesses choose to do things once again. A period of re-evaluation and consolidation of both resources and processes.

Due to the nature of our larger projects that we have underway for off-shore clients, and the projects of our own we have also been developing, we will no longer be doing casual design jobs or small local business websites at short notice.

This doesn't mean that we are not interested in working locally, rather it means that if you are serious about a project, and serious about engaging us to work with you on a project, you will need to do your homework before talking to us. Last year saw a massive increase in phone calls and emails from people wanting to talk about getting something started, yet not being realistic about the actual process necessary to facilitate what it is that they wanted to get started.

Some call this the process of tyre-kicking.

It seems our ability to get great search engine results is also our undoing when it comes to getting a lot of enquiries. A double edged sword. In part this has also been brought about by an investment and certain presence in advertising platforms such as the Yellow Pages and to a lesser degree My Pages. We will be withdrawing from advertising so proactively in these publications this year. It seems to be a dying media for one, and it also seems to attract enquiries that just waste time rather than create lasting opportunities.

This may sound as though we are dis-interested, or aloof about the local market.
Infact it couldn't be further from the truth. One of the projects we are working on and finishing developing, is based firmly within, and relies heavily on, the local and national market.

For those past local clients that may have worked with us sporadically this means that some forethought will need to be applied to future projects. We will set aside some time each month (pencilled in as the final week of the month) in which we will be available to allocate resources. Outside of this we will be generally unavailable.
This means that we can concentrate on the job at hand, and offer a more focused service to the existing clients that we have. It also means that we can focus our energy on the development of our own projects under the umbrella of The Big Picture but outside of the area of creating and managing websites and brands of small local businesses.

These are exciting times of growth in an area that we have skills, and see a need for in a changing market.