Business

JOE’s latest Game Changer is Michael Pardus, a native of Poland who’s making strides in the field of web design and development in Dublin.

By Shane Breslin

Launching yourself into business in the middle of the worst recession in living memory can be daunting enough. When you’re not even of a native of the country in which you’re trying to make things work, you get the feeling it’s that bit harder.

But Michael Pardus, a native of Krakow in Poland who has been living in Ireland for the past eight years, is not only making things work. His business, GoWeb, which he runs with his Polish-based brothers Thomas and Peter, is knocking the socks off plenty of his rivals in the field of web design and development in Dublin.

“I had worked in different IT-related companies and eventually became unemployed,” he tells JOE.ie. “I was at the stage that I didn’t want to do another IT job – I wanted to do something that was meaningful for me. So I was hired as a freelancer for a web design company – basically I was a salesperson – but I learned a lot about the business. And then I started talking things over with my brothers, who were studying IT at college in Poland at the time.

"One of them decided to specialise in SEO and the other did design, and when they graduated we decided to start our own business.”

He completed a couple of business courses and used all his savings to get things up and running, and while it’s taken a lot of long hours and hard work to get to a position where the business can be described as sustainable and profitable, going it alone the best decision he’s ever made. “I decided that I either go and work more for small money, or I do this,” he says.

“At the very beginning it was very hard, cold-calling, knocking on doors. Old-school stuff. But we started to build up our customer base, and started to pick up bigger clients.”

The company takes advantage of modern communications to split itself between two bases at opposite ends of Europe: the sales team, led by Michael, is based here in Dublin and the development arm, led by Thomas and Peter, is situated in Krakow. “The advantages to that is that we have a lower price for a high quality product that we deliver.”

So at a time when the dogs in the street are barking about Unique Selling Points, what does GoWeb do differently?

Quite a lot, it seems. “We sat down and said: what do we not like about web design in Ireland?” says Michael (right). “The first thing was: it was very hard to get a price. You have to write a love letter to a company, and wait for weeks on end, to get a quotation! And some of them don’t even respond.

“Secondly, there were questions like ‘How many employees do you have?’ Eh, why do you need to know that? We found that quotations were designed by how much you can pay, not by how much work we do for you. So we worked hard on getting our quotations right, based on the work and time we put in, and then we put those prices on our website.

"I think we were the first Irish company to do that. So companies see the price and they see the portfolio and they can give us a call. And we reply in three days maximum.”

“Thirdly, we provide complex services for all aspects of online media: Design, Development, Site Optimisation, Marketing. Not many web companies in Ireland offer all services under one roof. Moreover, we have complete web design packages including all parts of successful website like logo design, hosting, domain registration, basic SEO, etc. All included in one price."

Expansion plans?

All of GoWeb’s business currently comes from Ireland, and while Michael would like to expand into his homeland at some point in the future, he is happy to concentrate on Ireland for the moment. “The Polish market is difficult,” he says.

“There is the same amount of work but four times less money. We have a verygood customer base here, all our staff speak very good English and communicate with all clients in English, so everything is very well organised.”

There is also the possibility of extending GoWeb’s services into the nearby UK market, but there are cons as well as pros to that one too. “I spent three years in the UK but I left London because it was too busy for me,” he says. “To go into business in the UK would mean spending a lot of time there again, but I’m happy here. I love Ireland, it’s exactly what I was looking for. I’ve met people from lots of different countries but the Irish are by far the nicest. Ireland is great. Except for the weather sometimes.”

As befits someone who has made things happen already, Michael is already looking at his options, and is keen on working together with other Irish companies to create a co-operative geared towards offering complete marketing solutions to clients, catering for everything from web design to PR and print to SEO. A complete price comparison website for Ireland is another idea, because, Michael says, “there is a big opportunity for any shop, no matter how small, to sell online.”

The precise details to that are under wraps for the time being, but don’t be surprised to hear more about that in the future. With Michael Pardus, the sky is nowhere close to being the limit.

For more information on the products and services offered by GoWeb, check out www.GoWeb.ie or call in to the company's new office just off Capel Street at 7a Meeting House Lane, Mary's Abbey, Dublin 7.