Miber is a Mexican plumbing parts manufacturer that needed a new website to better communicate their status as a leader within their industry; the site was launched in September of 2008.

 

I was hired to take charge of creating their new site. They wanted a design which communicated a clean/modern/industrial "look" that better reflected their underlying business and brand, while also making it very easy for their customers to access critical product information.

 

Old Miber site.	New Miber site.

Bethe Mexico was a real estate development company that hired me because of their interest in broadening their business horizons with investments in IT.

 

During mid to late 2008 I worked closely with the company as an IT and sales consultant to plan, develop and implement a range of IT solutions.

 

The first project that was successfully carried out was the development of a point of sale (POS) platform for their construction material retail outlets that integrated hardware, software, training for their employees and a product catalog.

 

Three other needs and possible solutions were identified, discussed and generally planned but were finally not executed because of faulty management and its lack of business ethics.

Those three solutions were:

• Set guidelines for and oversee the deployment and control of the POS platform to all current and future retail outlets.
• Leverage the Internet through a complete web presence overhaul including new information architecture, design, content, promotion strategies and more.
• Develop the Internet as a sales channel through an integrated e-commerce solution.

One of the main challenges I faced was working with the management to join their business goals and opportunities with practical IT solutions that they could understand and measure.

In 2008 I worked on the Coscatl team as a web and marketing consultant. The company offers outdoor organizational development events and consluting to other companies.

 

The goal of my work with Coscatl was re-planning and consolidating a disparate marketing plan into a new streamlined strategy with a new website at its core.

 

The new site's design and marketing copy was developed by me to fulfil the objective of making the company appear more "corporate" or "polished" without losing the friendly image they had come to be known for. The site was successfully launched on the 25th of June 2008 with sales leads rising steadily thereafter.

 

After launch the team and I continued to manage and improve the website (primarily through SEO) as well as optimising and monitoring sales leads and conversions coming through the site. I also spent some time helping them to study the feasibility and development stages of new products and services they were interested in offering.

Old Coscatl site.	New Coscatl site.	'Other Services' page.

During 2003 and 2004 I ran a small business venture selling natural and organic health supplements under the brand Alternativas Naturales Gaia (Gaia Natural Alternatives). I operated in the city of Cuernavaca and to a lesser extent in Mexico City.

The venture began when I noticed that flaxseed was gaining popularity in Mexican health food circles. Indeed two types of powdered flaxseed were by far the star products throughout the project:

• Nopalinaza which was flaxseed with cactus and 4 kinds of herbs.
• Piñalinaza which was flaxseed with dried pineapple and three kinds of citric fruits.

The brand was simple in that I wanted it to be easily identified as being natural and organic. The name Gaia was chosen after the Greek goddess commonly associated with the Earth in its natural state. The slogan was integral to the brand name: "Alternativas Naturales" which means "Natural Alternatives" in Spanish.

 

The marketing focused on pushing three product benefits individually or combined depending on the product:

 

A. Overall health improvement.
B. Weight loss.
C. Disease prevention.

 

Because I didn't have exclusivity to sell the products I sought to differentiate myself by adding custom labels to the products in the form of pamphlets expounding on the benefits of the products. My personal image and salesmanship was also an important factor for the differentiation and prosperity of the business.

 

The products were distributed and sold through these three channels:

 

1. Personal sales by me, door to door, referrals, etc.
2. Small team of comission-based salespeople; I was interested in understanding and exploring multilevel marketing systems.
3. Wholesale sales to small retail outlets like health food and health supplement shops.

Gaia A.N. logo created by me.	'Nopalinaza' was my best selling product: Flaxseed with cactus and four kinds of herbs.	'Piñalinaza' was my second-best selling product: Flaxseed with dried pineapple and three types of citric fruits.

Viralo.com was a spanish-language blog a friend and I started in the summer of 2006 as an experiment to learn about the 'ins and outs' of blogging as well as to try and pinpoint the shared attributes of 'viral' content.

 

During the planning stage we carefully defined the image, theme, language and tone of the blog. Within a strict writing schedule we posted about quirky, funny or interesting topics in categories ranging from art and movies to society and technology. We drew a lot of inspiration from blogs like boingboing.

 

The blog was updated daily and lasted for approximately 6 months.

At its peak it received more than 200 daily unique visitors. Apart from learning a lot about blogging, the most memorable aspect of the blog was being constantly surprised by what content became popular.

Viralo.com logo created by me.	Viralo.com blog.

Amikoo.com was a Web 2.0 Social Network startup aimed at College Students in Mexico which hoped to compete directly with Facebook. The site was considerably influenced by fellow Social Networks Bebo and the original Xuqa.

 

From idea to launch, I was the driving force behind Amikoo. I acted as founding partner, project manager, application designer, web designer, as well as brand, marketing and PR manager.

 

The project started at the beginning of 2006 with meticulous research into all aspects of the venture, followed by the writing of the business plan. After some difficulty in finding the right people to work on the project and securing the right funding, we moved on to the development stage in the first quarter of 2007.

 

The development stage was strenuous, marked by over 6 month of complicated interactions between the feature requirements and designs put forward by me and the programming challenges faced by the 2 expert coders hired to build the application.

 

The software was developed from scratch using open-source tools including php, smarty, ajax, subversion, debian linux, and others. After many setbacks and missed deadlines we launched in July 2007.

 

Following launch we focused on improving the site and listening to customer feedback. I concentrated my efforts in implementing a web marketing and web PR strategy aimed at getting kids to sign up and use the site. The cornerstone of the marketing strategy was viral or word of mouth marketing, supported by a strategic combination of link building, email marketing, SEO, press (including magazines, newspapers and blogs) and an in-house development blog to accelerate the viral "spread".

 

Amikoo suspended operations in the first quarter of 2008 owing primarily to underwhelming performance in new user registrations.

 

Causes for this were:

 

a. Facebook launching their f8 applications platform.

b. A very crowded and quickly consolidating Social Networking market.

c. Barrier to new registrations caused by the "all my friends are already on another site" syndrome.

d. Investor support was withdrawn after registered user targets and other milestones were ultimately not met.

e. Timing.

 

Despite Amikoo not gaining serious traction as a social networking platform, it was a successful proof of concept with a small fan base that correctly implemented many Web 2.0 principles.

 

Some site highlights:

• Gift shop with virtual currency called "koo". The idea was to develop the shop into a micropayment platform similar to those prevalent in Asian social networks such as CyWorld.
• User uploaded and maintained public media gallery. Each item in the gallery was a widget or other embeddable content which we called "Kubos". Users could rate and comment on these as well as add them to their profiles with one click.
• Amikoo introductory video titled "Amikoo te va a Encantar" (You're going to Love Amikoo). Written and directed by my good friend Yahayra Juarez and I.
• Secret admirer/crush feature. You could try to "fish" for someone you fancied, then if the other person "fished" you back a "connection" would be made.
• Public pages for schools and cities to discuss topics, publicize events, vote on polls, share media and carry out other "socializing" activities.

Amikoo Home Page.	User Profile.	"Kubos" media and widget gallery.
Gift Shop. Gift concepts developed by me. Graphic design by David Leonardelli.	Newspaper clipping about Amikoo with an interview of me, from the Reforma newspaper.	Amikoo Logo. Created by Swiss designer David Pache.