If more and more local Web sites seem to look and work better, I’d guess there are two chief reasons why. One: the design architects are creating more visually compelling stuff. Two: the construction companies who actually make those drawings into functioning structures.
I’ve posted about some of the many fabuloso local designers. This time, we’re praising the hardy men and women behind the scenes who wield the digital hammers and tape measures, working tirelessly to make our leisurely surfing a more satisfactory experience.
Based in Minneapolis’s North Loop (with an office in Chicago), Ratchet is, as its name suggests, a machine shop. A digital machine shop. Led by three guys who’d worked for Fallon’s interactive division, Ratchet opened its doors (originally as Misys) in 2004 with a simple model: We’ll build the technological guts of Web sites (and, now, mobile apps), but we’ll leave the pretty pictures to the ad agencies and other interactive designers. We’ll just make sure the Flash works right, the content’s easy to change, the applications all intermesh to the correct tolerances like precisely engineered gears.
It’s a distinctive niche, though Ratchet no longer owns it, not even locally. For the past few years, Bloomington-based IT firm Sierra Bravo has also been working with agencies to make their site designs work technologically. This spring, it officially launched the Nerdery as its back-end site-building brand. The Nerdery now makes up the heaviest load of Sierra Bravo’s business. (Dick Youngblood summed up Sierra Bravo’s business in Wednesday’s Strib.)
So far, at least, these towns are big enough for both of them. Both Ratchet and Sierra Bravo are growing—fast. The recently released INC 5000 list, which ranks the fastest-growing small, private U.S. businesses by percentage growth over the last three years, put Ratchet at 443, with 581.9 percent growth to $5.2 million in revenue. Sierra Bravo, led by the Nerdery, posted 237.2 percent growth, to $6.5 million, placing it 1346.
So why is this model going up so fast?
For one thing, there are a lot more tools to know. Innumerable Web technologies have arisen—not just Flash and .Net but also Silverlight, PHP, WBF, and (my favorite) Ruby on Rails, as well as content management systems like Sitecore, Stellent, and others. “Technology has gotten progressively more complicated,” notes Sierra Bravo president Luke Bucklin.
Though most agencies have Web techs on-staff, few of them know all the back-end technologies. Nor does it make sense to hire specialists in them. Meanwhile, of course, more and more agencies (and their clients) are moving more of their work into digital—that’s where the higher response rates and lower costs are.
Is there a difference between the Ratcheteers and the Nerds? Ratchet founders Marty Davis and George Hilal tout their ad-agency background along with their tech chops. Ratchet, they say, is fluent in the tongues spoken on the marketing and tech worlds—worlds that often collide during Web projects.
The Nerds, meanwhile, talk up their wide-ranging in-house knowledge of interactive technology platforms and systems. With 50-some techies on the payroll, there’s at least a handful of staffers who are familiar with, say, Xaraya or augmented reality or Joomla. Plus, they can crowd-source solutions. “We have a hive mind,” says Nerdery SVP Mike Schmidt. Ratchet uses a similar term for its methodology: “collective IQ.”
Maybe the difference is one of style. Ratchet’s Web site and its elegant promotional booklet communicate an orderly, businesslike (though not stuffy) aura. The Nerdery site is rambunctious and geeky-funny, with a little touch of the early Geek Squad. (Affable gent that I am, I like both sites.)
Ratchet’s client list includes older and/or larger independent agencies Olson, Clarity Coverdale Fury, and Duffy & Partners. The Nerdery has partnered with smaller, outside-the-box shops like HartungKemp, Zeus Jones, and Sevnthsin, though it’s also worked with more traditional ad agencies such as Colle & McVoy and (interestingly) Fallon.
People who live and breathe interactive marketing can offer a deeper analysis of this business model than I can. But I think what the existence of Ratchet and the Nerdery points to is an evolution in how Web sites look and operate. Says Ratchet VP Mark Hines, “traditional agencies are used to print…There aren’t a lot of companies focused on technology. But marketing dollars are shifting from traditional media to digital.”
To me, that suggests that as Web sites look less and less like print pages, new digital aesthetics will arise. It’s already happening.
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