Empowering end users and opening up new markets

INNOVATION PROFILE:Jerry Kennelly, Tweak.com

JERRY KENNELLY is among Ireland’s best-known and most successful entrepreneurs. Beginning his career as a photojournalist in the 1980s he spotted an opportunity to create an electronic library of stock photography for use by publishers and designers throughout the world and founded Stockbyte in 1996 to exploit it.

Stockbyte, along with its sister company Stockdisc, captured 10 per cent of the worldwide royalty-free stock photography market inside 10 years and in April 2006 Kennelly sold them to Getty Images for the quite staggering sum of $135 million. Not surprisingly he picked up the Ernst Young Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year along the way and Stockbyte was selected as the Exporter of the Year and recognised in the Deloitte European Fast 500 and Fast 50 awards.

Never one to sit still Kennelly quickly turned his attention to building another global business and launched Tweak.comin February 2011 following a $10 million investment. Tweak.comis a web based services that aims to put professional quality design and graphics capability in the hands of business owners with no design or technical skills required. "We are aiming to empower business owners throughout the world to take control of the image of their business and produce Madison Avenue standard design and print," says Kennelly. "It's a bit like offering high-end fashion at off-the-peg prices."

Created with end users in mind, Tweak provides a complete design solution in a web browser. “The ground-breaking technology we developed in order to make this design revolution possible is not only user-friendly, but it’s also resolved many of the issues which have previously made beautiful design inaccessible to millions of businesses globally,” Kennelly adds.

“Tweak allows people running a business to take control of their own design and print and do it to a very high standard,” he continues. “And businesses need this more than ever in today’s market. It is often underestimated just how much more visually literate people are today. The visual appeal of advertising and marketing instantly dictates how most of us perceive a business. People vote with their feet in this regard and they buy great pieces of design like the Apple iPhone in their millions.”

The service offers users almost a million pieces of design, which are customisable by colour, access to a vast range of stock images, a logo builder and editable sample copy for more than 350 business types. These resources allow users create their own business stationery and marketing materials and have them printed for a fraction of the cost of going through the traditional process.

While this may sound enormously complex it’s been designed to be very simple. “We hide all the complicated stuff in the background,” Kennelly explains. “And we give business owners and managers control over how their business looks and feels. The problem faced by many businesses today is that regardless of their size they probably still have to compete against major multinationals for customers.

“My local butcher here in Killorglin has to compete against the major supermarket across the road. How he differentiates himself is very important. People like that have to be great marketers as well as being good at their own businesses. And they have to do this without the benefit of having huge advertising and design agencies working for them.”

Budget is another factor. "Never before has such a high standard of design been put in the hand of non-designers," says Kennelly. "Tweak.com has democratised the craft of design, copywriting and print. For a small or medium-size business attempting to create an image for their business through design has been a nightmare. We have carried out a study which showed that a simple trifold A3 newsletter could cost up to €5,000 to design and print using traditional methods but costs just €500 with Tweak.com. They no longer have to hire a graphic designer, a photographer or a copywriter.

"With Tweak.com, it's really simple and cheap. The design is already done – and we've selected photos and written carefully researched copy specifically around the business type. There is no time-consuming interaction with designers, copywriters, printers," he continues. "Stock photography has already been selected or they can upload their own photographs at no extra cost. The copy is already written and changes can be made very easily. And if you don't have a logo you can create one in less than a minute. But most of all, everything happens when it suits the user."

The issue of scale has also been tackled. “People don’t want to spend a fortune on print. We have addressed this problem by allowing people do short runs like 50 postcards to test out a campaign. They can download a pdf file of the artwork and print it themselves, have it arranged to have it printed professionally, or we can have it printed for them. We also have a free logo application on the site to allow people to create their own professional standard logo.”

Accessibility is the key to the service. “I was one of the first to use desktop publishing in Ireland back in 1984 and I have seen the technology evolve since then,” he says.

“I have taken what I’ve learned over my 30-year career and I’ve used that to help create materials to make businesses more successful. When I was running Stockbyte we were creating great images for people to use in their businesses, now we are creating great design. Unfortunately, 90 per cent of design is really poor and it costs just as much to print bad design as good. We are giving people a one-stop-shop for the copy, the design, the images, the logos and everything else they need to create great marketing materials.”

Kennelly is particularly pleased with the level of choice and control offered by Tweak. “What we have found consistently from user surveys is that they want to be in control and they don’t want to be limited in terms of choice. It is no longer acceptable to go to a designer and to be offered three choices of design and then have to pick one. That’s why we offer our customers literally millions of combinations of copy, images and design templates to choose from.”

Less than two years after its launch the business is now close to breaking even, according to Kennelly. “We are very close to break even. Hopefully we’ll get there by the end of the year. We have a partner in Germany who is using a fully customised and localised version of our technology to deliver design and print services throughout that country and we are also working hard at breaking into the US market.

“Any business like this needs to succeed in North America if it is to achieve its potential and we hope to make a significant announcement in this regard in the coming months.”

And he is already looking to the next advance for the technology. “We are working on a kiosk model where people will be able to walk into a retail shop or print outlet and design their brochure or leaflet and have it printed out while they wait. This will really put professional design and content at people’s fingertips.”