|
5 September 2001
Following the doom and gloom of dot com crashes, one small business operator is showing the big boys how e-business can be a real winner for small business.
Just over a year ago, Paul Wilson of Template Central created an innovative e-business that has given thousands of people around the world easy, inexpensive access to professional design templates for use in presentations, Website 's and brochures.
On August the 30th Yellow Pages, one of Australia's biggest suppliers of services to SME's, recognized his dedication to excellence when Template Central was named the winner of the inaugural Yellow Pages E-Business Awards. In what must be one of Australia's richest awards for small business, Paul was presented with a check for $50,000 a $13,000 advertising package and will have the support of a mentor for the next twelve months.
The E-Business award was introduced in an effort to encourage, reward and recognize those small businesses embracing the online market and who provide a role model to other enterprises.
Like many small business concepts, the inspiration for Template Central came from close to home. Paul was teaching computer software applications to executives from a large corporation. He noticed that although his students loved anything that required them to design, they soon became bored with the dull, stock-standard templates supplied in the software packages. He searched for more interesting designs or templates and came up with a blank.
Further conversations with contacts and friends in sales and marketing helped him understand that most corporate managers couldn't afford to employ a professional designer to help with presentations but they still needed to stand out from the rest. Paul also realized that his potential customers would want instant access to his designs at all hours of the day and night.
A business opportunity was born. He took his digital camera out onto the streets of Sydney and soon compiled a library of contemporary and cutting edge shots that would be great for Web pages, sales presentations, university projects, conferences and training seminars. Prices started from just $4.99 which was a bargain for anyone desperately looking to give their presentation a competitive edge.
His site, TemplateCentral.com is a do-it-yourself Website that now has thousands of professional design templates to add impact to virtually any form of publication, be it digital or print.
Template Central has grown into an international e-business success, attracting customers from as far afield as New York and London - in fact 92 per cent of the site's revenues come from outside Australia.
Paul said "Most small businesses probably don't have much time or money to create professional-looking documents. Now, thanks to the Internet and Template Central, they can download instant professional design to make their work look professional."
"The Internet is perfect for fast distribution of design since professional Web, presentation and other document templates could easily be made instantly accessible to customers."
"I have had copious numbers of emails from product managers, students and business owners telling me that they won a contract, or got A grades for projects where they had used Template Central. It's very satisfying knowing that my product is having an impact on businesses all over the world."
"Template Central is already the world's largest provider of common software application templates and my immediate goal is to continue adding to the design library to meet the changing needs of today's demanding consumers and maximize the growth potential."
According to Forrester Research, the downloadable software market is tipped to grow substantially over the next few years and Template Central is ideally poised to take full advantage.
Only three per cent of current online sales consist of digitally downloadable products, but Forrester expects this figure to rocket to 22 per cent, with a value of US$2.9 billion, by 2004.
Add to that, the fact that millions of people around the world use the packages Template Central supports, ranging from Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Outlook through to Dreamweaver, FrontPage and GoLive, with more to be added over time, and the potential is exponential.
Media Contact: Paul Wilson
Email: paul@templatecentral.com
Phone: 61 2 9565 2400
[Back to Media Releases]
top |
