There`s a good reason why Mike Wright and his staff are crammed back-to-back into open-plan offices that are ridiculously small for 30 people, although no one seems to mind. "Slaves to bandwidth," says Wright. "Lots of space or a super-fast PC - it`s an easy choice."
He points to the offices across the hall where The E-mail Corporation`s bandwidth provider is conveniently based. "We plug right into their port."
Right now, the company needs every bit of bandwidth it can get (though it`s also working on more office space in the same Rosebank building). Last month, it topped 10 million e-mails for the first time, not bad for a company in a country that has two million or so active Internet users.
Wright, who`s actually a chartered accountant by training, started exploring e-mail back in the good old dot-com days when it was still fashionable to throw a party to launch your Web site. (He laughs uproariously at that quaint idea.)
At the time, around three years ago, he was managing director - "a very green MD" - of VWV Interactive, and the client was (surprise, surprise) planning a Web site launch, which would include a direct mailshot to 5 000 addressees.
"Our assumption was that this was an e-mail shot," says Wright. "Tremendous! But when we asked for the e-mail addresses, they said, `Aren`t we printing and posting it?` We totally missed each other."
That mailshot was dropped but the episode set his mind ticking. E-mail was clearly the future. He spent three days and nights working on a business plan and then, eureka, The E-mail Corporation, a direct electronic mailing specialist, was born.
"I always thought I`d do something on my own," says Wright, whose first stab at business was as a seven-year-old selling silkworms for 1c each on the pavement outside his house.
"I`m someone who wanted to be responsible for my own success, but the business I wanted to start had to be well thought out and pragmatic, not a flash in the pan. I wanted to do it right, in a space where it would be tough for others to compete, and most of all, I never ever wanted to let anyone down."
Mass e-mail distribution fitted the bill on all counts, says Wright, who`d like people to see his business as "the e-mail company that builds great software". "My little sister - our marketing director - would kill me for saying that," he adds instantly, explaining that she`s positioning the company carefully as "a specialist in secure electronic document delivery".
Wright`s motto that "we`re never going to drop you" has clearly struck a chord among the company`s growing customer base, which includes top banks like Absa, Standard Bank, Nedbank, FNB and Investec.
"For the first couple of years, we had that start-up feeling. This year, we passed that. We`re a real company with real clients, real revenues and real projects; we`re no longer a start-up. Hey, we`ve just had our first two orders from the UK. It seems that exactly what we do is exactly what they need. And we`ll be earning pounds!"
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