Escape Studio Web Solutions from Osijek in Croatia was established in 2003, offering graphic design and web development focused on the international market. The team of eight young professionals specializes in graphic design, web development and online marketing and has managed to position the company in the market by providing advanced web services like search engine marketing and optimizing but also by taking stake in the success of its clients. When the company was founded in 2003, it received support from the BIOS business incubator in Osijek.
This interview was conducted with Damir Podhorski, CEO of Escape Studio.
Is this the first company that you have started, and what drove you towards it?
Yes, this is the first company we have started. We started our company five years ago when we were still students, building on a hobby of ours. We were web design and web development amaterus, and web design and programming were our hobbies.
How did you finance your start-up operations and how long did it take for the company to become self-sustainable?
We financed our startup-operations mostly from with limited resources - our own. As students we were working on some part-time jobs with very low income. But we financed our startup ourselves. The most important thing in our start-up was entering the Business Incubator BIOS, because it enabled us to have very low operative costs in first three years.
What are your major products and services and how are they unique? What is your competition?
Our major services include web design, web development, Search Engine Marketing [SEO, Google AdWords, banner management] and web project development. Our approach is unique, since we take stake in the clients' success. We initially quote low prices for the work on for example webshops, and than take a percentage of the webshop's income for a certain period.
Our competition in Croatia is still very basic, since virtually everyone who knows how to make web page offers this service. In advanced services like in SEM [search engine marketing] we have very low competition because this is a very new service here in Croatia.
How did you first launch the product?
We were still in college. We developed our first web page then, which was the official web page for our college. It all started there.
How do you measure the success of the company?
Income, profit, number of employees, client feedback, and client profit from our services.
Who are your clients and how many do you have? How are you focusing on expanding your user community?
We have all kind of clients. Web is a type of media that is suitable for promoting all kind of businesses. We are expanding our number of clients by using our web page presentation, AdWords promotion, direct mailing as well as direct sales.
Are you planning to patent your product and do you see any obstacles in doing so?
No. We do not plan to patent our products, but we are focusing on developing web projects that we can have fixed income from. We also developed a couple of projecsts that were funded from local goverment institutions.
What was the biggest challenge in starting an innovative business in your country and how did you overcome that?
The biggest challenge was competition because in our country we have very low barriers for enterning this type of business. But we overcame this challenge by building client portfolios and providing good examples of our work through these portfolios.
Who are the shareholders in your company?
The shareholders in our company are the company owners.
How have you benefited from business incubation?
Mostly in strong team development. We started our company basically from our homes. Three owners of the company were working from home. But when we started incubation in our 25m2 room in the Croatian business incubator we realized that for building a strong company it is very important to have a great team. The team needs everyday communication that is not possible without a business office.
Do you have some specific lessons that you know now and wish you would have known when you started your business, and which you would like to share with fellow entrepreneurs?
The most important lesson is to have patience and strong motivation. There are ups and downs, good times and bad times in every business, but the most important thing is to have enough strength to overcome crisis in business.
How do you plan to internationalize your product and if so, how?
We are already doing international business through partners in UK and Denmark. At the time we are working on finding a partner in The Netherlands.
With hindsight, are there any particular lessons or messages that you wish you would have known when you started up your company?
Yes. I wish somebody would have told me that our services need to make profit for our clients. If we realized that in start it would be much easier to build a strong portfolio of clients.
Do you feel that you had the necessary advisory and support network when you started your company?
Of course. Business incubator BIOS helped us with advisory and support by all means. We were students, and we were lost in time and space when we entered BIOS. They helped us with directing us on market.
What is your message to funders/supporters and what is your message to the users of your product?
Our recommendation to funders is to support projects that come from people with strong and high motivation. And to the user of our products I would like to say that try to focus on the benefit from web business and not just to having a web because everybody has one.