Minnov8

Over a year ago I became aware of a local Minneapolis firm, ArcStone, when they introduced Wonderfile, a very interesting offering that is sort of a nouveau document management system for today’s always-on and always-connected internet crowd, and I was reacquainted with them when they demonstrated their brand new Association Management Portal (AMP) at MinneDemo a few weeks ago (their demo here).

Completely out of the blue a few days after MinneDemo, I stumbled across something ArcStone had created for a client called the Interactive Roof Designer, a Flash piece for Trimline Building Products (more here) that allows color changes for roofing tiles. Since half my business focuses on trends for the home furnishings industry (The Trend Curve™), I was immediately interested in what they’d created since this is the sort of thing our customers would be interested in. Though there have been many similiar types of Flash-based “changing colors on the fly” web offerings like this, I must admit being pleasantly surprised by how good an implementation they’d done and that it was visually stunning and worked flawlessly.

I immediately thought, “Who are these guys and why haven’t I heard much more about them?” As a consequence, I called CEO David Carnes and went over to chat with him last week to find out more about what this Minnesota firm is creating and what’s at the heart of their innovation.  One of the things I always look for in any company is some sign or articulation of their vision and values. How do they see themselves? What do they care about and are they aligning their work around their core values…and do they even know what their values are? David talked about their values and just being there, seeing their offices and getting a sense of the environment, made it clear that yes, they’re living their values.

At the outset of our discussion, David and I talked about his vision about the company, its direction and the spaces they’re in (e.g., Wonderfile, AMP, eBrochure) and the important work they do creating web strategies and web “assets” for their clientele.

They’ve been at this internet/web game since 2000 and have a couple of dozen people in their company now — some of whom are aligned with specific properties like Wonderfile or AMP — and have approximately 400 clients. They’re in the former carriage house of the historic Semple Mansion on Franklin in Minneapolis which, as they describe it on their website, “…has housed a bank, an architectural firm, and now houses our unique blend of web developers, consultants, and guppies.” You’ll have to poke around their website to discover more about their fixation on guppies.

What I found particularly interesting is that ArcStone is doing what many startups and emerging companies are increasingly relying upon as their core infrastructure to deliver their applications: Amazon Web Services and specifically their S3 storage service.

One aspect of our conversation, and my contemplating our interview afterwards, was that many smaller firms and companies (not just in Minnesota but everywhere) have one fundamental problem that ArcStone exhibits: getting the word out. Why is it, for example, that I’d not known they’d embraced the leading open source ecommerce package I’m particularly hot on, MagentoCommerce? Or that they’d delivered that Interactive Roof Designer product? Or that Wonderfile is as robust and mature as it is?

No question marketing and sales is always a trade-off between resources and time; energy devoted to clients or to one’s own company; managed growth vs. an unmanageable spike if buzz makes a product like Wonderfile take off too fast and beyond the ability for ArcStone to scale. Still, it’s the one thing that troubles me whenever I am exposed to a company like ArcStone that has strong products, client base, team and core values driving it all and yet aware of how few people with checkbooks (i.e., prospective customers) have any clue about who they are and what they do.

I think, however, that you’re going to be hearing a lot more about ArcStone in the months and years to come as they continue to deliver on their vision and create momentum around their products and services.