Well, it’s 4:45 on our first day back at work after break and I keep forgetting to blog. Not a good sign for blogging, but a very good sign given all the work we have to do. Everyone had a fun break and our Jackson Fish family grew a little as Walter now has an adorable puppy. I’m sure she won’t distract him from coding. We also have stocked the office full of way too many snacks and treats (many of which are even healthy-ish). Come by if you’re hungry.

It’s late December, Seattle is covered in snow (finally) and what more could you want than some adorable delicious gingerbread cookies made by Jenny? How about a picture of some adorable delicious gingerbread cookies made by Jenny? And yes, I know, this is the bloggiest break we’ve ever had. The blog is supposed to be paused until we get back to work on January 5th 2009, but I just had to post about these cookies. Notice the little Jackson Fish Market storefront cookie and the Kondo (the little guy from Invitastic) cookies. Mmm mmm good.

Through the hard work of our own wonderful Mary-Alice, What a Lovely Name has just gotten way way better. We try not to toot our own horn too much but for the geeks in us this new addition to our baby naming site is just too much fun.

What a Lovely Name now includes names from “Other Worlds” including Harry Potter, Star Wars, Star Trek, Narnia, and of course… Middle Earth.

So if you want to name your child Faramir, Aslan, or Padmé then this is the place to go!

(Yes… we know the listings aren’t exhaustive — e.g. ST is mostly NG — we will be adding more as time goes on.)

And since it’s supposed to be vacation right now, we promise, no more posts until after the new year.

Even though we’re on winter break here at JFM we had to interrupt the peace and quiet of our blog because Bob Garfield wrote a huge and thoughtful piece for AdAge on widgets. Given that we’re at the very early stages of having advertisers fund useful consumer web apps, any time someone super influential, like Bob, starts beating the drum, it’s big news. The last time this happened was this past March, also in AdAge with an article from Matthew Creamer talking about how maybe ads on the web should be useful apps instead of just yelling messages.

This time, Bob is coming at the issue head on describing the disconnect between the potential for reaching users with software given how potentially effective and inexpensive it can be vs. the reality of how few marketers are seriously engaging in this area. And it’s true that we focus on full apps here at Jackson Fish Market, but to us they’re just the natural extension of what advertisers are (or should be) doing with widgets. Of course, the main point of Bob’s article is that never mind our full blown apps, marketers aren’t yet utilizing mini-apps/widgets the way they should. Bob describes the benefits better than I ever could:

“At a maximum, the widget is something like the magical connection between marketers and consumers, not only replacing the one-way messaging long dominated by media advertising but vastly outperforming it. Because online the link is literal and direct, and along its path, data of behavior, preference and intention are left at every step. Oh, and your target consumers actually go out searching for your branded gimcrack. Oh, and they display it within easy reach. Oh, and they pass copies along to their friends and associates. Oh, and because they’ve been turned on by a friend, they are hospitable and receptive recipients. And, oh, in case this didn’t quite register the first time I mentioned it, the barriers to entry are preposterously low.”

And, lucky us, we’re quoted all throughout the article.

So attention brand marketers who wandered over here curious after reading Bob’s piece:

• the best way for you to do brand marketing on the web that engages an audience is through the creation of useful web apps
• whether those apps are small widgets or full blown sites doesn’t matter. What matters is that you start understanding and using the medium now.
• and in case you were confused… here at Jackson Fish Market, not only do we have a portfolio of six brandable web apps ready to go, but we have dozens of ideas for new apps that could be a perfect fit for your goals, your audience, and your budget.

We now return you to your otherwise peaceful month of December. (And potential customers have no fear, even though we’re on break, we can’t help but be on e-mail all the time anyway, so get in touch.)

It’s been a busy month here at Jackson Fish Market, and now it’s time to pursue some other interests. JFM is officially “on break”. Luckily through the magic of technology, all of our websites will continue to function. And if they don’t, alarms will be raised, fighter jets will scramble, people will be woken up at ungodly hours, and typing will ensue until everything is back as it should be.

We hope everyone has a great set of Winter holidays and hopefully gets some time off as well. As much as we love working at Jackson Fish Market we each love doing all sorts of other things too so extended time off is key. If you need to get in touch with us though, don’t worry, we’re all still on mail. BECAUSE WE’RE HUGE NERDS (yes Jenny… you too!).

Jackson Fish Market will reopen for business bright and early on Monday, January 5, 2009. Have a lovely rest of 2008.

Welcome to the second installment of Jackson Fish Market’s Holiday Gift Guide. We’re pleased to share a few gift ideas for your favorite designer, friend, or family member. And if you’re worried about spending in this down economy, we’ve provided gift ideas ranging from a nifty $3 up to a hefty $100 buckeroos. Enjoy and Happy Holidays!

Typographic City Posters from Ork Posters. Channeling Paula Scher’s awesome maps!

How about a voucher to have your picture taken with your friend or sweetie? It costs just about $3 for 4 images. Just use this handy photobooth locator here.

OXO Mango Slicer. Brilliant!

Pac-Man glass set for that old school gamer buddy of yours.

These beautiful glass EcoSpheres are self-sustaining, fully-closed ecosystems. Perfect for that person who is too busy to keep plants/pets alive.

Take-G Crafts. How cool are these wooden toys?

Phaidon 3 Volume Design Classics. Can I just say daaaaaayummm, the packaging is cool!

Subscription to Craft or Make magazine. Ok, ok, I know you can read some of these magazines online (which I do!) but it makes a really nice gift for someone who’s too cheap to buy printed form. (hint hint :))

Hi Dell folks:

I have a monitor I purchased from you awhile ago. The power button is busted. All my other Dell products perform admirably, so while this is irritating, I wasn’t too upset. However, after dealing with your customer service organization for the last hour I am on the verge of killing myself. A few thoughts. Do with them what you will:

• I don’t have the record of my purchase handy so I tried to find out whether my monitor was still under warranty on your web site. No luck as there is no service number on the monitor. And your website doesn’t even list LCD monitors as a category that have service tags. Everyone I spoke to on the phone was obsessed with what computer I was using thinking that I purchased the monitor with a Dell computer and they could look up the service tag on that. Guess what, I’m, not using a Dell computer. I just bought the monitor.
• I would document the endless repetition of your automated customer service prompts that continue to ask me the same question over and over at each level of the tree even though I’ve been clear every time that “NO, I AM NOT CALLING ABOUT A PRODUCT THAT I HAVE YET TO PURCHASE AND DO NOT WANT TO BE TRANSFERRED TO YOUR SALES PEOPLE” but I simply don’t have the energy.
• Between all the transfers I endured from your customer service folks I ended up talking to five different Dell employees. None of which were able to help me. Each was obsessed with finding my order number for the monitor. I was able to log into my account on dell.com and after some convoluted clicking i found a screen which claimed to have my order history for the last two years. It didn’t. I told the people on the phone I could give them my account name. They said that wouldn’t work. They asked for a customer number. I have 10. Seriously, there are TEN different customer numbers associated with my Dell.com account. Dell, please go buy some stuff on amazon.com. Go to your order history. It’s very simple. They can tell you exactly what you ordered, when, for how much, etc. Why in 2008 you are unable to do this I do not know.
• When I decided my monitor was probably not under warranty I went to the place on the Dell website to find out how to get my monitor serviced out of warranty. They wanted $49 for me to talk to someone to tell me how to get it serviced. Am I insane for not wanting to pay $49 to find out how to get my monitor fixed?
• With each person I spoke to I gave them my phone number in case I got disconnected. Despite getting disconnected three times, nobody every called me back.
• Apple fanboys, wipe those smirks off your faces. I was calling on my 3g iPhone and it was at fault for the continuous dropped calls — even after I switched off 3g. Horrible.

I’m going to stop worrying about this right now as I may lose my mind if I waste another minute dealing with this. But if anyone at Dell is listening:

• I own one of your monitors.
• The power button is busted
• I want to get it fixed.
• I am willing to pay you to fix it.
• If you can help me without forcing me to spend more time interacting with your website or customer service people (neither of which appear to have any idea what to do about this seemingly simple problem) then please send me mail and tell me what to do.

Thank you.

We’ve already shared our thoughts on what bootstrapping means, but when I read this piece on bootstrapping I couldn’t help but share since I think it’s pretty much on:

“When you decide to bootstrap, you commit to fund primary development and growth through internal cash flow from real-life customers. You — the founder — and a limited number of early employees may forgo paychecks for quite some time to make this work. But to keep that strategy to a minimum, it’s common for bootstrapping companies to turn to consulting engagements, non-recurring engineering contracts, value-added reseller agreements and projected supplier contracts. In short, “moonlighting.” These funds go toward initial growth and expansion until the company can stand on its own two feet.”

Well said. I would also add that, at least in our observation, a significant percentage (i think the majority) of companies that are funded by VCs today would be better off as bootstraps. There’s a paragraph at the end of the article describing how some companies can’t take the bootstrap path. This is true of course. But there should also be a paragraph describing the startups that shouldn’t take the VC path. I believe when a company that can bootstrap, takes VC, it can warp their values, and ultimately may lower their chances at success.

I think we’re in a world right now where bootstrapping is the exception (in our industry), and VC is the norm. I think that should be inverted.

There are many ways we could count the start of Jackson Fish Market: the day the state issued our license, the day Jenny showed up, the day we got our first paying gig, the day we got our first check, etc. But in this webby world it seems like the day our web site went up is the proper way to count our launch. Two years ago today, Monday, November 20, 2006, this website went up with our very first post (appropriately titled “Hello World”).

Some stats from the past couple of years:

• Founders: 3
• Full-time employees: 3
• Number of full-time employees that are also founders: 3
• Contractors who have worked for us: 38
• Interns we’ve employed: 3
• Apps we’ve shipped that we own: 6 (the first one shipped in July of 2007, 8 months after the company launched)
• Consulting jobs we’ve done: 16
• Number of blog posts (including this one): 1284
• Locations we’ve occupied: 2 (across the hall from each other)
• Number of weeks where we’ve shut down the business so we could all have time off: 15
• Page views our sites have generated: 4,185,712.
• Dollars of investment we’ve taken from venture capital, angels, family, friends, ourselves: 0*

* In the interest of full disclosure, while we haven’t put any of our own money into the business, all three of us make substantially less money than we could in the corporate world (or at least used to be able to in the corporate world). So that’s a form of subsidy, but we haven’t transferred any money from our pockets into the business.

The business stories that humans tend to like reading typically involve overnight success. And I think I understand why that is. When the success is described as happening suddenly, it somehow makes it feel like it could happen to us. Fate could shine on each and every one of us and sweep us into a huge winning situation. I try not to read too many of those stories. Instead I like the stories about businesses that are built one small step at a time. And invariably, when you ask the people who are overnight successes how it went, they will confide in you that they worked hard for 5, 10, 15, 20 years before their success happened “overnight”. Obviously I like these stories because that’s the template I believe we’re following. These stories because they make me feel like it could will happen to us.

On the one hand, I look at where we are and can see almost nothing but the huge heavy lifting we have ahead of us to grow this business into the entity that Jenny, Walter, and I envision. But on the other hand, two short years ago, even in my most wildly optimistic moments you couldn’t get me to speculate that we’d be where we are after only two years. While we still have a long way to go, I am incredibly proud of where we’ve gotten to so far.

And most importantly, creating our own future, while fraught with doubts, and certainly no sure bet, has been the most rewarding, enjoyable, and uplifting work experience I have ever had. This is thanks in no small part to the people I get to work with (customers, partners, and contractors), but Walter and Jenny especially.

We have lots of good stuff planned for our third year of existence. We hope you’ll stay tuned as we build our business brick by virtual brick.

We’re coming up on our second anniversary in business and we can’t think of a better way to celebrate than with the launch of a new web app. Our latest creation is – What a Lovely Name™.

What a Lovely Name is a baby naming resource featuring thousands of names, origins, and explanations. Browse by personality traits, or cultural traditions, or even see what celebrities are naming their babies. Once you’ve found some great names, you can send them to friends to get their reactions. For every name in our database, What a Lovely Name will generate a custom logo. You can tweak the logo until you love it and then download it to use any way you like or even buy merchandise emblazoned with the logo. This is a perfect way to create great personalized gifts when a newborn arrives on the scene.

(BTW, don’t tell anyone, but you can even create personalized merchandise for yourself. No baby necessary.)

We’d love for you to check it out, browse the names, generate some logos, and maybe even buy a customized product. Your feedback and comments, as always, are welcome and encouraged. Thanks for taking a few minutes to try out the new site if you get a moment. And of course, if you’re interested in sponsoring the site. Don’t hesitate to get in touch.

P.S. Instead of a launch party for our latest release we decided to make a short video. Hope you like it. No babies were harmed in the making of the video.

My friend Steve forwarded this article from Time on the demise of Circuit City and the rise of Best Buy. But if you don’t feel like reading the whole thing, Steve summarizes it quite well:

“Best Buy is bright and fun; Circuit City is dark and grim.”

Dark and grim don’t make me want to buy stuff. CompUSA was the same way. I think they hired Circuit City’s interior designer.

You certainly don’t need this blog to tell you that the economy is in trouble and there’s a lot of uncertainty. And while reviewing all your efforts with a careful eye, and spending conservatively is always good advice, it’s certainly something that everyone is doing now. I think everyone is asking themselves: “am i doing everything that would withstand scrutiny given the reality of the market right now?”

But… once that’s done, now is also the time for companies to double down. Not to oversimplify, but companies like Procter and Gamble and Chevrolet gained market share during the great depression, with increased marketing being a non-trivial factor in their gains. But not everyone always has the budget to double down on brand marketing. Even in the best of times it’s hard to justify spending on experimental new media, in hard times, shouldn’t it be impossible?

Here at Jackson Fish Market we produce brandable online experiences that are focused on engagement. You can rent our experiences instead of building them yourself. You can choose from our existing experiences (They’re Beautiful!, Invitastic, Carbon Grove, Elmore City Dance Club, and They’re Ugly!). Each of these can be ready for you to use in a matter of days. We also produce new experiences from scratch that can be ready in a few short months or even weeks depending on the size.

Here are three key reasons you should sponsor interactive branded online experiences (from Jackson Fish Market or elsewhere) in the coming months:

1. With tightening budgets, consumers are going to spend more time at home. Trends are already showing that when consumers are at home, they’re spending less time in front of their televisions, and more time in front of their computers. This is the venue in which to reach your audience. And what better way to reach these customers than with a free and useful online service. We know how to build engaging and useful services that feature your brand exclusively. We know how to design functionality that resonates with your audience and reflects your brand values. With these sites, you’re in the right place, with the right service, at the right price.
2. Renting branded experiences is way cheaper than building your own. While many agencies will build you a site and then move on to the next project, we let you lease our sites for as long or as short as you like. Our experience has shown that leasing sites from us not only keeps our shared priorities aligned, but it can cut your annual costs from 50-75% relative to building and managing your own site. And if you’re worried about long-term ownership, we’re happy to work with you on long-term discounts, exclusivity, and even buy-out clauses. Building high quality software that engages an online audience and is more than a 2 minute distraction is more difficult you might think. And despite the economy, finding software talent (design and programming) can be a struggle. We can build something great, exclusively for your brand, on a budget.
3. Engagement online is eminently measurable. In tough economic times, metrics and measuring ROI take on even more importance than usual (and they’re already pretty important). Online experiences are incredibly measurable in multiple dimensions. It’s more than hits or page views or even unique visitors. It’s how many minutes people spend using your branded service, how many people they share it with, how many times they return of their own accord, etc. Did you know that users of our virtual flower service They’re Beautiful! who have planted their flowers in a virtual greenhouse return an average of 8 times to water their virtual flowers? Wouldn’t you like to have a service where your audience is returning on its own to use the service, and accruing value to your brand, the exclusive sponsor of that service.

Bottom line, here at Jackson Fish Market we:

• build beautiful online experiences
• our experiences are designed to engage audiences
• we have several that are ready for you to sponsor (and customize) today
• we can build new ones from scratch, just for your brand, in a relatively short time
• sponsoring these experiences cost a fraction of what it would cost to build your own (even over multiple years)

And most importantly…

• We love working with great folks, who are marketing great brands.

Get in touch. We’d love to hear from you.

Happy Halloween everyone. We whipped up a fun app for everyone just in time for the holiday. Hopefully you’ll enjoy using it year round. Please check out our latest creation — They’re Ugly!.

Enjoy.

P.S. For anyone with long dead flowers in their They’re Beautiful! greenhouse, you may want to go check them out. We added a small but oft requested feature. Same goes for your They’re Ugly! conservatory.

I was having a discussion the other day with a friend about old media transitioning to the new world — a process that the current economic situation will (i believe) hasten. I have long believed that the main thing hampering newspapers, record labels, etc. is their premise that when the transition is complete they need to end up with similar or better economics. It’s as if they can’t imagine what the point of saving their business is, if they don’t have fancy offices and hundreds of employees when the transition is over. And I suppose I get that the business that would remain would resemble their current one so marginally that one could argue there is no point. Of course, at least they would have a business with momentum in the same general space they used to dominate. Now it’s just pathetic to watch them die slowly (and perhaps now not so slowly).

Since I have never owned a successful large business (and am still working on owning a successful small one) I’m really no expert on the challenges there. That said, I do know a dopey thing when I see it. One of the local newspapers in Seattle, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (the PI) has had a couple of their tech reporters writing blogs for some time. Specifically Todd Bishop writing about Microsoft and John Cook writing about the local startup/venture “scene”. Todd and John fled the PI over six weeks ago (in mid-September) to a local smallish business newspaper to start a Seattle online tech reporting venture — now called TechFlash. John and Todd are good guys (though I’m sure my compliments will ensure we get extra harsh treatment the next time we ship something) and their site is a nice way to check out the ever-burgeoning Seattle startup space.

But their site is not the point of this post. The two blogs they left at the PI are. My guess is that John and Todd noticed that their two blogs were generating a non-trivial number of page views for the PI and decided that it was an opportunity to make their coverage more than a tiny sub-sub-sub mini-feature for the local paper. Instead they’ve got their own site and their own brand. The fact that they didn’t feel like they could do this at the PI but went to the local Business Journal paper to do it also says something. But even more interesting is that while it took 2-3 weeks for the PI to replace Todd on the Microsoft blog, here we are, over six weeks later and John’s Venture blog remains exactly as it was the day he left it — replete with his picture and name on the column.

If the Venture blog was enough of an opportunity for John to leave the paper and refashion it into its own site, you’d think that the PI wouldn’t want to miss a beat, would staff it immediately (even with a temporary assignment), and maybe even start beefing it up to compete with John and Todd’s new venture. It’s like the PI doesn’t even care. Maybe they’re too busy monitoring paper and ink futures.

Like I said, I have no idea how to run a large newspaper, but I do have some sense of the difficulties involved in creating a popular website. And if in fact John and Todd’s blogs were getting some decent attention, it seems suicidal to me that the PI seems to care so little about getting them back on their feet. I wonder how long the Venture blog will remain this way. Should be interesting to watch.

There are many ways we could mark the official launch of our little business. There was the day our papers went through with the state, or the day we signed our first paying contract, or the day that Jenny, Walter, and I were all finally and officially employed by the company. But the date I like to use is Monday, November 20, 2006. That’s the day our website went up. And on that first day, the header on our site looked like this:

It was kind of odd, but we thought it was neat. The company was named for my grandparents’ mom and pop small business to evoke the small and personal nature of the business we wanted to create. What better way to symbolize that than through the vintage retail storefronts with the Fish Market lit up. We even had a little tweak on it as when it gets to be night in Seattle, it gets dark on our site as well.

(One weirdness was that the street lamps only made their appearance at night. During the day they were nowhere to be found. I attribute this to the little known early 20th century invention of retractable hydraulic street lamps. Very few remain today.)

I remember us discussing that when we shipped our first product we would have to open up a complementary storefront that represented our new creation. And how cool would it be when the street got full of colorful and bustling little shops, all representing web creations from our little company. And of course, clicking on the stores would take you to the respective site.

Several months later in the summer of 2007 we were about to ship our first product, They’re Beautiful! a virtual flower service. This lent itself well to our retail storefront theme. But before we put a flower shop on our street we thought it would be cool to tease everyone with some construction happening on the street to let folks know we were working on something. And while at the time there weren’t exactly a ton of people browsing our site, almost nobody even noticed. But we thought it was very cute.

And then on the day we shipped They’re Beautiful! the construction plywood came down and our lovely little flower shop opened for business.

All in all we were feeling very proud of all our cuteness and what we thought was originality. And it’s not that these ideas didn’t come from us, they did. We hadn’t seen anyone else do this, and we were pretty sure we were the first to do something like this. We weren’t. The folks at Cuban Council beat us to the punch.

Did we steal it from them? Of course not. Did we add our own innovation? Sure. Was it original? Who cares. This is how things go. When ideas are cool they seek out as many people as possible to execute on them. Neat ideas are promiscuous. We swallowed our pride and kept going.

Next we revisited our flower shop with some new bouquets. Sure enough a cool vintage purple flower delivery van pulled up in front of the store a couple of days before the new flowers arrived.

Then it was time to shipp our invitation service — Invitastic. This was harder as it wasn’t clear what retail presence a site like that should have on our street. We ultimately settled on a party. Instead of construction we had people setting up a party on the third floor of one of our buildings. If you looked closely you could even see someone setting up a disco ball. Almost nobody noticed this either.

To highlight the “partyness” happening in our header, when we finally launched, the party was in full swing, there was a banner hung from the roof, and people up on the roof sneaking out of the gathering to do who knows what. (Note: while I don’t think we considered it at the time, the Cuban Council guys also had folks - presumably themselves - up on their roof.) This one looks best at night.

It was in this version that we also introduced a billboard targeting some of our customers.

Our next app was going to be Carbon Grove, a carbon reduction e-mail reminder service. It was at this point that Jenny realized that she could no longer fight the monstrosity we’d created. The headers were created in photoshop at a relatively low resolution patchworking together tons of little pieces of vintage architecture and original art. They weren’t made quickly but they were definitely dirty. The headers really needed a complete redo, at high resolution, and in a photoshop file that was constructed properly.

What followed was several hours of trolling around vintage buildings in downtown Seattle with a camera and a week of really intense and boring work on Jenny’s plate. She was in a bad mood that whole week.

Some readers may at this point ask, with all this effort expended, did it ever occur to us that maybe we were spending a lot of time on something that really didn’t matter. After all, there are only three of us, and isn’t shipping new software and earning money the priority over chronic website header masturbation?

In short, no. It never occurred to us. And I doubt it ever will.

Once the header was reconstructed (for both day and night of course) we were ready to add the Carbon Grove city park to our little scene. Apologies to the historic landmarks that were razed to make room for this little urban patch of green.

That was in the Spring. This summer we shipped Elmore City Dance Club. The site lets you create your own dance diagrams and upload a matching video. The site is named after the town on which the movie Footloose is loosely based on. It felt like an underground, after hours, secret dance club was the way to go. And of course, neon looks better at night.

And this is what our header looks like today. Until you next see some new storefront open, or some subtle hint that some new tenant is coming to our little street. And who knows, at some point, when we run out of room, you may need to scroll the header horizontally to see all the action, or even interact with the people on the street.

It’s not that we don’t understand how design memes travel around in the ether. And we don’t think that anyone’s been copying our site or even inspired by it. That said, it’s hard not to take a breath when you see new sites popping up with such similar elements. I would imagine this is true for any creative folks who see an idea they connected with taking root in other places.

A few months ago State Farm put out a promotional site called Now What with this user interface.

And just the other day, Jenny found this little shot on the Bank of America site.

I guess it’s no surprise, that given people’s lack of faith in giant financial institutions these days that even a big bank would want to appear more “mom and pop”. I suspect it’s a motif we’ll be seeing a lot more of in the coming months and years.

While I think spending all this time on such a minor detail is part of what makes us who we are, I will admit to there being one critical downside. With all this work put into it, if we ever want to get rid of this concept from our site, I don’t know how easy it will be for me to part with it.

One of the designers of Magic the card game recently got married. He blogs about it in awesome detail. Wouldn’t you know that he and his bride decided to have a super detailed themed wedding. Their theme? Games and puzzles. Whether their theme resonates with you or not you can’t help but love the amount of effort they put into the details. Here’s their invitation:

They also spent quite a bit of time on the cake which was designed to look like the game of Life with details from their lives embedded throughout the board:

“I’m not sure how easy you can tell, but every detail of the board was copied onto the cake, right down to the words on each square. Except the words on the board weren’t the actual text of the game. Oh no. If we were going to personalize everything else, why stop at the cake. So I rewrote every square of the game talking about things that could happen to Lora and me in our future. The Game of Life, by the way, has a lot of squares. And Mike’s Amazing Cakes, bless them, put every word I wrote on the cake. Lora stressed that I didn’t need to go through the trouble. Who was going to bother to read the entire cake?”

I think this serves as a good model for any experience you create, wedding, software, or otherwise. People appreciate effort. Even on tiny tiny details. In these difficult economic times cutbacks will be inevitable. But the companies that still have the discipline and focus to get the details right will end up retaining loyal customers, while others will only cheapen their brand and harm their customers’ experience.

[thx Steve for the heads up]

Stardock is an interesting company. I had always known them as a publisher of tools for customizing and skinning the Windows UX. But they also have a software distribution tool and they’re publishing some very well-received games as well. They’re a private company and as such have no requirement to “report” much of anything. However, they decided to go ahead and issue their “2008 Customer Report” (PDF). As they put it:

“Stardock is a privately held corporation. It does not release its financials to the general public but the company has thrived by being very transparent to its customers. The objective of this report is to let people know what the company is currently doing and what it is planning to do next.”

Neat. I can see us doing something similar down the road.