Interactive Return, Making Return From Dotcom Gloom

Sunday Business Post, 2 June 2003

Profile: Martin Murray

Company: Interactive Return

Location: Dublin

Staff: Ten full-time Martin Murray, co-founder of Irish-owned web marketing company Interactive Return, knows all about market volatility.

Murray established Interactive Return as WebBusters in 1999 on the crest of the dotcom wave, to provide a range of internet-related services to corporate clients, including online business strategy, online brand creation, design, development, online marketing, e-mail marketing and usability services. A period of rapid expansion for the company ended as soon as the stock market crashed in March 2001. A hastily implemented company restructure followed, involving some staff cuts.

Unlike many other online service providers, Interactive Return managed to weather the storm. It has sincere-established itself in the Irish market. The company's latest revenue figures came in at a respectable €848,000.

In February, Murray also secured funding worth €60,000 from Dublin City Enterprise Board.

"When I initially set up the company with Fergal O'Byrne in May 1999 there was just the two of us. We started to do business straight away, securing a contract with Rondomondo, a division of Eircom, which is now no more.

"In November 1999 we took on one additional staff member, and by April 2000 we had increased our staff numbers to seven. By December 2000 we were up to 14 people," said Murray.

The company moved from its offices in Tara Street to the Guinness Enterprise Centre in 2000 and continued to add to its client base, particularly in the financial services sector. "In March 2001 the stock market crashed and Eircom pulled out of a lot of its Internet interests. Things were quite difficult and we restructured at the end of the year, going from 14 people back to ten," said Murray.

Realising that the domestic market offered limited opportunities for further growth, Murray decided to look further a field. "We began to expand into the US market in January 2002. We now work with the cable TV company owned by media conglomerate Cablevision. Our job is to drive online visitors to their websites and to convert those visitors into purchasers of Cable TV subscriptions," said Murray.

The company now has 90 customers. Six of these customers are based in America, including Diageo and FuseTV, a competitor of MTV. "The US is quite a bit ahead of the Irish market in terms of how they like to do business online. It gives us a handle on what is going to be happening in Ireland and Europe six months down the road. For example, clients in the US are very interested in pay-per-performance pricing models, so we are paid based on the number of clients we bring to them," said Murray.

"We intend to continue in our current service area, but we would also like to move up the value chain. In the US market we will certainly be looking to expand our client numbers, because we feel that there are more substantial opportunities in that market than there are in Ireland and Europe at the moment."