Low-profile service provider starts raising voice

Scott Bartlett

For a company hosting "thousands" of business websites and touting itself as the country's "most prolific" website developer, Quik Internet has a relatively low profile.

Keeping under the publicity radar has been a deliberate strategy for the small business-focused internet service provider, says general manager Scott Bartlett.

"[The industry] is maturing now and that's why we have started to become a lot more active and a bit more vocal," says 25-year-old Bartlett.

"While other ISPs have done well marketing themselves to the residential market, what we're happy about is the fact that our own customers know us very well to the point that they've got the cellphone number of the general manager if they've got a problem."

Based in Newmarket, Quik and its four franchisee businesses (North Shore, Manawatu, Wellington and Christchurch) employ a total of about 30 staff. Quik's services are also resold through about 20 agents, usually complementary technology providers, in other centres around the country.

With slim margins in the ISP industry, Quik's strategy has been to encourage clients to give the company their web development and maintenance business as well as hosting their email and websites.

This year Quik's in-house design team will complete more than 300 website development projects and the company aims to increase the number to 500 next year, Bartlett says.

He says Quik's web development service fills a gap in the middle of the market between the numerous one-and-two person, often home-based, web design businesses and the larger operators targeting big corporates and Government work.

He says in the past couple of years small business operators' concerns about launching onto the internet have shifted. Where they were previously worried about the cost of developing and maintaining an online presence, now their fear is that a website will involve a large time commitment from them.

"Sometimes they're afraid of undertaking a website development project because they think it's going to involve a hell of a lot of their time when they're busy. We put all those fears to bed and let the customer know that we're actually doing most of the work for them."

Quik started as an ISP in California in 1996 and arrived in New Zealand in 1998 when Bruce Jeffrey and Geoff Olliff picked up the country franchise.

Despite its small business focus, Quik also has "several thousand" residential customers and several larger corporate clients.

Bartlett began his ISP career in early 2002 when, fresh out of university with a management degree, he took on a sales role with a company called The New Zealand Revolution (NZR).

Founded by David Miller, NZR focused on "the low end of the web development market", sending its reps door-to-door around industrial parks to sell websites, Bartlett says.

He became operations manager of Quik when the two businesses merged later that year.

Bartlett says his present role at the helm of the company includes representing Quik and its franchisees at an industry level.

Quik Internet

Who: General manager Scott Bartlett.
Where: Franchises in Auckland, Wellington, Manawatu and Christchurch, with agents in other centres.
What: Internet service provider and website developer.
Why: "We find a lot of small businesses out there still need education because they're afraid of some of the technology that's involved."