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Surf! chats with its founder and CEO, Lau Chak Onn to get a low-down on what the buzz is all about
What is Foldees?
Well, the short version is that we’re a website selling designer greeting cards. The long version is that we run regular contests to recruit cool designs for greeting cards and sell those greeting cards back to the public. Each time a card gets bought, the original designer gets a royalty.
How did the name come about?
We wanted something playful, yet instantly conveying the idea of a greeting card, so we figured that the only pieces of paper you ever fold are greeting cards. Why the double E? Otherwise it would rhyme with “oldies”, which we would not want. We had a few names in mind, but this was the one that stuck. Yes, we’re aware of the “your company sure fold” cliché, but the URL was available and it was catchy, so we took it.
How did the idea come along?
To be perfectly honest, I “drew inspiration” from one of my favourite sites, Threadless.com. Threadless sells designer T-shirts using a similar contest model to recruit designs from freelance designers and the T-shirt designs there are absolutely brilliant! My partners and I probably own more than 50 Threadless shirts between us, so we figured that a design revolution was in order for greeting cards too.
Who is on your team?
My team has a very diverse backgr o und. I was the editor for STUFF and NewMan magazines. After that, I worked in an agency selling online ads for MSN. My first partner, Alvin, comes from an audit background with Arthur Andersen, then PWC and is now working in oil and gas. Together, we used to come up with business plans for all sorts of ideas, so one day, we decided to finally just get out there and do it. We are looking for a designer to join us soon to spruce up and regularly update the website, so if you’re interested, send us a resume. We’ve gotten by so far with numerous part time designers, but those guys don’t have very long attention span either.
How are you different from the rest?
Like I said earlier, Threadless is a similar concept to ours. There are sites like Cafepress and Zazzle that sell user-created greeting cards, along with mugs, t-shirts, posters, calendars and everything but the kitchen sink.
However, how we choose to differentiate ourselves is twofold. First, we’re strictly greeting cards based. We might branch out to other things in future, but the Foldees brand is very specific. Greeting cards are event-specific and given 100% as gifts, which creates some unique challenges and opportunities.
We want to exploit these opportunities. The second differentiation is an experimental business model we’re trying out by which we allow people to print the cards themselves, in the comfort of their own homes. We’ll still sell traditional cards that we print via traditional methods ourselves, but I have a running bet with my partner that DIY printing is the way of the future.
Where did you get funding to start?
We applied for the MDeC Technopreneurs PreSeed fund. You can check it out at www.msc.com.my. If you’ve got a good idea for a business and are serious about it, the fund is excellent for starting off! I think the maximum grant is RM150,000 and it’s equity-free! I don’t say this often, but I think this programme in particular is a great initiative from the government. It gives a very solid foundation for any two people to start a company with nothing more than a good idea and some willpower.
How is the response like so far?
Fantastic! This is the first contest we’re running, to sort of test the water, but the response from both the media and the public have been awesome! When we first announced the contest, we send our flyers to quite a few sites and blogs and almost all of them published something about the contest. After that, forums like Lowyat.net picked it up as well, which caused other blogs to pick it up and soon, we were getting about 200 unique visitors a day. To date, I think we’ve gotten about 3,000 unique users to the site already and about 7,500.
The most surprising part of this response is that there’s actually nothing for most people to do on the site. It’s currently just to recruit designs from potential designers, so most people are just curious. We expect the traffic to really peak by the time you read this, when the actual cards are put on the site for ratings and comments.
What are the challenges you face?
Finding a good programmer. We’ve got one now and he’s absolutely fantastic! However, before this, we were looking easily for 6 months, and things didn’t quite work out with our first programmer. Unfortunately, even though I come from a programming background, I haven’t touched code since I left college. As our site is quite technically complex in the background, this was something absolutely essential to the success of the company, and there was a huge feeling of relief once we found the right guy.
Aside from that, I suppose the other thing is keeping your team motivated. When you think big, your goals are very far away, so you have to keep the carrot big and large in the eyes of your team and give them a sense of purpose. For a first-time entrepreneur like myself, this isn’t the easiest thing to do.
Do you do any online advertising?
At the moment, we’re not concentrating on advertising just yet. We want to build a loyal audience first and then perhaps have initiatives such as corporate sponsored cards or micro-sites. It is a potential source of revenue, but I disagree with how it’s sponsoring the majority of web traffic in the world at the moment.
Where are you planning to take this in the future?
We have no intention of limiting ourselves to Malaysia. The first contest was a sort of toe-dip to see the potential and iron out the kinks with the website. Now we’re ready to go global and that’s what we’re going to do. In future, I have two major goals. The first is to someday open up a www.foldees.com.cn, selling only Chinese cards. The second is to get featured in WIRED magazine.
What do you think about new web start ups in Malaysia?
To be honest, a lot of them are just local versions of things that exist overseas. While there’s nothing wrong with the local model, it has a clear ceiling. I believe that we need more people who are willing to venture beyond borders. I’ve seen a few examples of this, especially within the other MDeC grant recipients, but they aren’t fully commercialised yet. Wait a few years and I think you’ll really see Malaysia on the map.
What can the Government and the public do to encourage the growth of local web start ups?
To me, Malaysia is one of the best places to start a tech company right now, due to the incentives and grants put into place. However, for a web start up, it’s probably one of the worst. Malaysia has one of the highest incidences of credit card fraud in the world and the Government needs to clamp down on this and hard. Payment portals like PayPal refuse to even deal with Malaysian companies, except in the most limited ways. Our credibility is also going to be questioned. These are very serious issues which I have already brought up with MDeC, so I hope something is done quickly.
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