By NICK STEWART
What a difference a year makes.
Last January, the three founders of Sudbury-based ConceptShare launched their title project, an online collaborative design application for businesses.
Just one year later, business has grown 8,000 per cent, a second version has been released, and most recently, they’ve struck a landmark five-year deal with Canadian graphics software giant, Corel Corporation.
ConceptShare’s self-titled program allows people to upload visual projects such as ad layouts or product designs to a private online workspace. Others, such as project team members or clients, can access this space remotely and seamlessly provide feedback through text, streaming conversations, or a series of simple graphical tools.
Through their non-exclusive agreement, ConceptShare will provide a Corel-branded version of this software to the company, available through CorelDrawConceptShare.com. The two will share revenues and marketing efforts.
“It really is one of the most win-win partnerships any of us have ever been involved in,” Bernie Aho, co-founder and product manager, says.
This move allows ConceptShare to leapfrog into large-scale foreign markets, as Corel has international sales, marketing and distribution networks with users in 180 countries. In fact, Corel’s established 100 million-strong user base includes exclusive deals with specialized markets, such as jewelry, government, as well as some automotive design companies such as Porsche.
Gerard Metrailler, a director of product development with Corel, says the company first approached ConceptShare as a result of problems CorelDraw users were having with regards to collaborating on final designs.
After some research, the Sudbury firm became the obvious best answer, he says, allowing Corel to marry its brand strength and global reach with ConceptShare’s power and knowledge of online collaborative spaces.
“The reason why we partnered with them is because they provide an amazing solution that enhances the workflow and solves a very specific pain for our users,” Metrailler says. “We’re really excited about this partnership, and what you’ve seen with CorelDrawConceptShare.com will be the first step in a lot of opportunities to work very closely with the team at ConceptShare.”
The deal has other implications for ConceptShare, according to co-founder and company evangelist Scott Brooks.
The five-year term of the agreement and the fact that Corel is a publicly traded company should also help to eliminate any hesitation potential clients may have had about dealing with a young technology company, he says.
This success caps off a whirlwind inaugural year for ConceptShare, whose product is now used in 35 countries, 45 U.S. states, and 20 universities worldwide. Clients include such as recognizable names as Google, the National Football League, Harvard University, AOL, and the New York Knicks.
Both their office space and staff have doubled since product launch, with six employees now occupying a roomy 2,000-square-foot location on Long Lake Road.
The explosive growth of ConceptShare has caught the eye of many in the industry. Last spring, the program took home both the Judges’ Choice and People’s Choice awards at Under the Radar, a prestigious Silicon Valley technology conference.
Fifteen United States venture capitalist firms have also contacted the company throughout the year -- “it’s annoying, almost,” Aho says -- and various firms have made acquisition offers, but Brooks says that being able to remain in Sudbury is key.
“We’re Sudbury guys,” Brooks says. “At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if we’re standing in a boardroom in Silicon Valley or wherever. We can do this anywhere in the world, and we want to do it here.”
Fiercely proud of the company’s smaller size and independence, Aho speaks of how the company’s status as a smaller firm also allows them to innovate and explore progressive ideas much faster than large corporate entities.
In fact, although cautious about discussing their plans for the future, both Aho and Brooks passionately insist their focus is and always has been on innovation.
One example of this is how they intend to leverage the success of their current product to create ConceptNation, a publicly-accessible version of ConceptShare. In essence, this community-based design collaboration is a type of social network where users will be able to put their photos and designs up for critique by the general Internet population.
The idea, Aho says, is to take the kind of interaction seen in online discussion forums to the next level. This means allowing people to garner general public input on anything from snapshots of their apartment in order to see where paintings should be hung, to brochure or poster design.
Such innovations and successes are the results of regular 100-hour workweeks for the staff, which have helped to compress three years worth of progress into the last 12 months, Aho says.
“It’s been hard work, but we wouldn’t have it any other way.”
www.conceptshare.com
www.corel.com
www.coreldrawconceptshare.com
