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April 9, 2004/Nisan 18 5764, Vol. 56, No. 29
Entrepreneur makes mark in Web design
RAEANNE MARSH
Special to Jewish News
"I didn't really know anything about computers when I got started," says Michael Goldfarb, whose company, Contact Designs, is ranked at the top of The Business Journal's "Web-Design Firms" list for 2003. For technical expertise, Goldfarb admits he relied on his partner at first. But the entrepreneurial spirit was all his. Having worked for others all through high school, he decided "working for other people wasn't going to be in my long-term best interest."
Web sites are de rigueur for businesses today, but in 1996, when Goldfarb founded his company, businesses were just discovering their advantages. His employer at that time was one of the many businesses looking to set up a Web presence, and Goldfarb's responsibility included evaluating bids that were coming in to handle the job. He approached his boss with a request that he be allowed to give it a try, and he and his now-partner, Mike McCallister, completed the job in two weeks - during semester final exams at Arizona State University.
Then business started coming to them.
"Everyone was in a rush to put something up. We did two- to three-page sites during our free time," he recalls.
Still holding his full-time job and taking classes at ASU, Goldfarb spent nearly a year working 100-hour weeks. Now, he says, he's getting his priorities straight and is down to only 70-hour weeks.
"It sounds like a lot," he admits, "but it's a definite improvement."
Learning how to run a business, he says, is the most challenging aspect of being in business. It's also the most exciting.
"I have a passion for business," he declares. And he shares that passion with those around him. "One of the most exciting things is being able to take care of the people who work for us, and make them feel like part of the company."
It means a lot to him that employees are as excited as he and his partner when the company receives recognition for its achievements. Maintaining that atmosphere of rapport throughout the company is the purpose behind their policy of filling positions on a referral basis rather than open soliciting.
"We can teach people what the need to know," says Goldfarb. So, when hiring, he focuses more on the person rather than the knowledge level.
Yet keeping up-to-date is vital, and Contact Designs stays cutting-edge.
"Competition is what drives it," Goldfarb notes.
The company's seven employees have different - although overlapping - fields of expertise, and the output of the company's four full-time developers rivals that of companies four to seven times its size, according to Goldfarb.
Goldfarb attributes part of that productivity to their ability to leverage the software they already developed. It's both time- and cost-effective. Most Web sites have similar things as their core, he points out, and so "we use building blocks, taking into account the basic things that almost every Web site does."
That's what enabled Contact Designs to recently help the Phoenix Coyotes put up their redesigned Web site in record time.
"They wanted it done in one-and-a-half months, which is ridiculous for a site that large," says Goldfarb. Yet Contact Designs got it done ... ahead of schedule.
Contact Designs does many different types of Web sites, and Goldfarb explains that donating their expertise to community organizations is an important part of the mix.
"It's a worthwhile use of my time to give back," he says, proudly pointing to St. Mary's Food Bank who took in over $200,000 in donations from the Web site his company created for them.
"There's good business opportunity in Phoenix," says Goldfarb, who grew up here and says he "liked it well enough to stay" - in contrast to many of his friends, who moved away after high school and who he sees only at holiday times such as Passover when they come back to celebrate with their families. His company's experience seems to bear out his optimism; having shown growth annually since its founding in 1996, Contact Designs is "on pace to do $1.4 million in revenue this year," Goldfarb reports.
Raeanne Marsh is a local free-lance writer.
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