March 6, 2006
Media matters | A chat with Jeremy Usher, founder and creative director of Firefly LLC in Damariscotta.
By Whit Richardson
Founded: January 2005
Employees: Three
Startup costs: $13,764
Revenues, year one: $57,177
Projected revenues, year two: More than $200,000
Contact: 877-734-7335
P.O. Box 337, Damariscotta 04543
www.firefly-design.com
Can you describe Firefly LLC for me?
Firefly is a full-service new media group, which really means we sit at a unique junction in new media between the fields of video production and editing, interactive Web design, and traditional graphic work ˆ anything from catalogues, brochures and traditional photography to immersive, interactive websites with motion graphics. We have quite a robust set of offerings that allows us to create new and different projects in ways that are hopefully a little more innovative and interesting than what people are accustomed to seeing.
How do those capabilities help you differentiate your company from other new media firms?
We find that we're really light years ahead of the competition locally here in Maine. In the area, the only [company] I would list as real competition would be Allure Creative in Brunswick. What differentiates us is mostly the spectrum of abilities that we have here. Ninety-nine percent of e-commerce websites rely on pre-built software. But we build everything from the ground up, so we can offer truly custom solutions that the end customer can manage very easily and rapidly without any outside help from us.
Certainly, we are actively competing in the Boston market, as well. We find that, generally speaking, anyone who talks to firms in Boston and then talks to us is pretty friendly because we can offer the same services for less money.
How did you finance the launch of Firefly?
In general, I like to tell people we are talent funded. Ryan Shepheard and Jonathon Duckworth are my partners. All three of us are graduates of the Maine School of Science and Math [in Limestone].
We're all fairly young guys and we've got a lot of talent, but we don't have a lot of financial backing. We didn't have any investors, we didn't have any loans. We paid it out-of-pocket from the freelance work we were doing.
How do you market the business?
Our most successful marketing campaigns have been Google AdWords and our website work. Google AdWords allows you to target specific key words and geographical regions, and you bid on your ranking essentially on a per-click basis. So you're not paying like a traditional print advertising campaign. Your ad might air 100,000 times, but you only pay when someone actually clicks and lands on your site.
What are your plans for growth?
Well, we're pretty aggressive, were looking to do all sorts of different things in the next few years. I'd like to open a few more offices. We figured the midcoast was the best place to start and get some attention instead of just drowning in a larger market like Portland. We'll probably be putting another office in a larger market now that we're going, maybe in the Boston area.
What kinds of mistake have you made, and what have you learned from those mistakes?
One thing we should have done in the beginning ˆ and this is really contrary to standard business logic ˆ we spent a little bit too much time working on our business plan instead of actually getting out there and producing the website and starting to do some work. It's a very heavily portfolio-driven sort of business, and we really needed to jump on that first thing.
Another oversight was that we should have marketed directly to marketing groups like Lee Communications in Newcastle, which works with clients like Hitachi and people in Japan and Silicon Valley in California, and David Vazdauskas of Victory Branding in Brunswick, which we are finding are really the gatekeepers to larger industry. They're possibly the most lucrative target for our direct marketing and I hadn't even thought of them.
If you could work on a global marketing campaign for any product, which would you choose?
That's a very difficult question. I don't think I could name one product. It would have to be something that let's us integrate different disciplines such as the video work and the Web. Probably one of the best avenues for that sort of work would be to work on feature film Web work, which is quite interesting for me personally.
New Entrepreneurs profiles young businesses,
6-18 months old. Send your suggestions and contact information to wrichardson@mainebiz.biz.
Employees: Three
Startup costs: $13,764
Revenues, year one: $57,177
Projected revenues, year two: More than $200,000
Contact: 877-734-7335
P.O. Box 337, Damariscotta 04543
www.firefly-design.com
Can you describe Firefly LLC for me?
Firefly is a full-service new media group, which really means we sit at a unique junction in new media between the fields of video production and editing, interactive Web design, and traditional graphic work ˆ anything from catalogues, brochures and traditional photography to immersive, interactive websites with motion graphics. We have quite a robust set of offerings that allows us to create new and different projects in ways that are hopefully a little more innovative and interesting than what people are accustomed to seeing.
How do those capabilities help you differentiate your company from other new media firms?
We find that we're really light years ahead of the competition locally here in Maine. In the area, the only [company] I would list as real competition would be Allure Creative in Brunswick. What differentiates us is mostly the spectrum of abilities that we have here. Ninety-nine percent of e-commerce websites rely on pre-built software. But we build everything from the ground up, so we can offer truly custom solutions that the end customer can manage very easily and rapidly without any outside help from us.
Certainly, we are actively competing in the Boston market, as well. We find that, generally speaking, anyone who talks to firms in Boston and then talks to us is pretty friendly because we can offer the same services for less money.
How did you finance the launch of Firefly?
In general, I like to tell people we are talent funded. Ryan Shepheard and Jonathon Duckworth are my partners. All three of us are graduates of the Maine School of Science and Math [in Limestone].
We're all fairly young guys and we've got a lot of talent, but we don't have a lot of financial backing. We didn't have any investors, we didn't have any loans. We paid it out-of-pocket from the freelance work we were doing.
How do you market the business?
Our most successful marketing campaigns have been Google AdWords and our website work. Google AdWords allows you to target specific key words and geographical regions, and you bid on your ranking essentially on a per-click basis. So you're not paying like a traditional print advertising campaign. Your ad might air 100,000 times, but you only pay when someone actually clicks and lands on your site.
What are your plans for growth?
Well, we're pretty aggressive, were looking to do all sorts of different things in the next few years. I'd like to open a few more offices. We figured the midcoast was the best place to start and get some attention instead of just drowning in a larger market like Portland. We'll probably be putting another office in a larger market now that we're going, maybe in the Boston area.
What kinds of mistake have you made, and what have you learned from those mistakes?
One thing we should have done in the beginning ˆ and this is really contrary to standard business logic ˆ we spent a little bit too much time working on our business plan instead of actually getting out there and producing the website and starting to do some work. It's a very heavily portfolio-driven sort of business, and we really needed to jump on that first thing.
Another oversight was that we should have marketed directly to marketing groups like Lee Communications in Newcastle, which works with clients like Hitachi and people in Japan and Silicon Valley in California, and David Vazdauskas of Victory Branding in Brunswick, which we are finding are really the gatekeepers to larger industry. They're possibly the most lucrative target for our direct marketing and I hadn't even thought of them.
If you could work on a global marketing campaign for any product, which would you choose?
That's a very difficult question. I don't think I could name one product. It would have to be something that let's us integrate different disciplines such as the video work and the Web. Probably one of the best avenues for that sort of work would be to work on feature film Web work, which is quite interesting for me personally.
New Entrepreneurs profiles young businesses,
6-18 months old. Send your suggestions and contact information to wrichardson@mainebiz.biz.
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