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MyBusiness Magazine
January 2002

Foolproof Start-up
By Deborah Tarrant

Paul Wilson recalls the high moments of the dotcom boom with amusement. "Sitting on beanbags, bouncing balls around during meetings, skateboarding in with a can of Coke... because that meant you were creative."

Wilson can afford to laugh. He has realised what many only dreamed about ~ the successful dotcom. His version Is based on a simple idea, selling templates for stationery, websites and e-mall, and most recently "off-the-sheif" logos, to the world.

His business, Template Central, has 1,000 small businesses and corporations who pay for 12 months access to his library, plus a total of 10,000 signed-up members who can download samples and these figures grow 25 per cent each quarter. While based in a narrow street In Sydney's hip suburb Newtown, his business has more than 90 per cent of customers coming from the United States and London. It is little known to Australians, but that hardly
seems to matter.

Via search engine listings alone, Wilson has been marketing to the world with great effect. His site now scores around 60,000 hits per month and not only have his products received the ultimate compliment of being copied by the two major image houses in the US, in recent months he has more than proved their worth by sustaining the sales growth after doubling prices.

So what made Wilson's operation thrive where others floundered? In part, it is because he kept it lean and mean from the beginning. Until a few months ago, it was just him and a computer, then escalating growth and a prize of $50,000 as the winner of the Yellow Pages eBusiness Award nudged him to the next stage and he appointed a fellow designer. His plan is always to keep staff numbers down. Never more than five employees, he thinks, because like many small business owners, Wilson thrives on the creative side of the operation, rather than the business processes.

"There's a lot of isolation in starting a business by yourself," says Wilson, who was a journalist with the ABC before travelling through Europe working as a graphic designer. After returning to Australia, he took a job in software training, teaching people how to use applications, which is where the idea to create Template Central was formed.

"People were all complaining. They wanted their work to look a lot smarter. Today we're all visually very sophisticated because we're bombarded with imagery. The hardest thing is to make your work attract enough attention for someone to read it. Even if the content is there."

In his earliest business phase, he established www.hotchilli.com.au, which took on design work, and later peddled his templates from the site by CD. Then he started to receive enquiries about a second CD and a few angry e-mails from customers wanting an instantaneous service. At that stage he was still processing orders manually. The solution seemed clear so Wilson teamed up with a Web consultant who helped him to create Template Central with e-commerce capability.

His client base is made up substantially of corporate professionals, small to medium businesses, educators and students. They are buying PowerPoint presentations, brochures, e-mails, websites, reports, newsletters and stationery on a range of subscription levels for corporates, individuals, multi-users of five or less and Internet Service Providers (ISPs). A range of royalty-free images is also available.

Wilson sees the massive capabilities of delivering his service through ISPs and telecoms as the next step in growing his business and his beliefs are well-founded. Forrester Research is tipping 22 per cent growth in the downloadable software market in the next two years, to a value of US$2.9 billion.

Is Wilson worried about being overtaken by the capabilities of the bigger players? Not at all, he says, the competition is healthy. "We're constantly developing, refining, keeping an eye on our competitors and leading rather than following."