2011 was certainly an exciting year in the history of Creative Conners. We’d like to take a moment and recap the high points of 2011 before moving on to 2012.
It was early summer when Gareth made the decision to expand the company. First order of business was a new shop space, which was found in historic Warren, RI, walking distance from Gareth’s front door. With 3300 square feet, dedicated manufacturing stations, an office and a break area, we now have everything we need to build the awesome gear that bears the CCI logo. We also have room to store our rental equipment, take on custom work and still have room for an energetic mid-sized dog to run wild.
The next big change at CCI was personnel. We added Royal Marty, Product Engineer in August and a full-time Sales Manager (yours truly) in September. Having more people around has really changed the way things operate here. More energy, more people for bouncing around new ideas and more capacity for quick turn-around jobs. It’s a good group of people.
During all this, we hired a marketing team, Tribal Vision, located in Providence, RI. They were great at defining and shaping the marketing goals for the company, consolidating the marketing efforts and bringing fresh branding to the company. But mostly they taught us how to craft our marketing message, something we don’t always think about, but should. During the expansion, they were definitely the fourth man in the shop.
We got our new website up in October. It’s hard to overstate how great the new site has been. Our customers have an easier time finding out about the products, our product line is presented in a clearer manner and it’s a lot easier to update the site.
Of course, we’re still building automation equipment, and business has been good. Besides our usual stable of software, controllers and machines, we now sell Starter and Add-On Kits for Pushsticks and Revolvers. We’ve also done some great custom work.
So, what do we have in store for 2012? At the top of Gareth’s list is the next version of Spikemark. It’s a big job and we’ll keep you up to date on the project as it moves forward. If you have any feature requests, now is the time to get your vote in by emailing me at ian@creativeconners.com.
Royal is starting the research and development for a Stagehand Remote. That’s a project that we’ve been talking about for a while, and now that we have someone like Royal in the fold, we’re going to give it the attention it deserves.
Thanks for staying in touch with us in 2011 and we promise to keep the posts coming in 2012. Happy New Year!