Market blamed as nine leave ad firm

By ADAM GIFFORD

Online advertising specialist Brave New World has laid off nine staff in what chief executive Frank van der Velden says is a reflection of market needs.

Most of the departing staff came to the company when what was then Webmasters Network merged with old economy design company Dave Clark Design.

The company has almost doubled since the merger last year, and "as you would expect in a fast-growing company, there needs to be some rebalancing of services."

The redundancies will bring the head count down to 70.

Mr van der Velden said growth had slowed in the traditional design area on both sides of the Tasman, as corporate productions such as annual reports and brochures moved to the web. A lack of company mergers and acquisitions meant there was little call for rebranding.

He said the redundancies cost about $70,000 and, with other restructuring and some contracting-out, would result in savings of about $1 million a year.

This means the company should break even for the year to June 30, as planned, and be in profit next year.

He confirmed Brave New World was also losing a couple of key business development staff to Xtra, and their work would be reassigned to existing staff.

"We do have vacancies in the authoring/copy area, so we are rebalancing."

Development of the company is being paid for from the proceeds of the sale of web design company Webmasters to Advantage Group in 1999 for $8 million in cash and shares.

Mr van der Velden retained Webmasters Network, which handles web site representations, and created two complementary operations: Touchpoint, which deals with e-mail and customer relations management systems; and Brave New World.

Links:

www.bravenewworld.co.nz