When Unlimited last featured Christchurch web development company Hairy Lemon as a Cool Company in April 2003 it was heading for turnover of $1.2 million that year and had six staff along with the married owners Graham Dockrill and Sue Wilkinson.

Since then the owners have divorced (but still happily work together each day), annual turn-over is up to more than $2 million and they now employ 20 staff and plan to increase that by another ten this year.

The pair started the company in the late 1990s working out of their back bedroom creating websites for friends and contacts. At one stage they had five people — and the cat — working in the master bedroom before moving into the lounge. With projected revenue growth over the next 18 months of between 75% and 100%, Hairy Lemon needs to physically double the size of its premises and will be looking for new digs this year. It has definitely outgrown the bedroom.

Exports currently account for about a quarter of total revenue but much of the sales growth is based on the North American market, Dockrill says. “We chose a market where all the cool companies are — Silicon Valley — and are taking it to the Americans in their own market.”

The company’s price advantage in Japan has been eroded by the high Kiwi dollar in recent years. And in the US, Dockrill says, service and attention to detail are its competitive advantages rather than price.
US success hasn’t come easy — it’s involved eight years of hard slog — and Dockrill advises others not to rush.

“We’ve grown through networking and introductions and we’ve taken our time. We got established with one or two clients that we came across through connections we had and we’ve slowly built it up. Each year we keep adding one or two more.”

On the innovation front Hairy Lemon’s currently involved in two interactive software developments. The first is a GPS-based unit for the tourism industry, for which the company wrote the software (see ‘Made in NZ’, Unlimited-Future Export page 16). Hairy Lemon is supplying the units for the GPS-based product and holds the IP rights to sell into the North American market.

It’s also developing the software for an interactive touchscreen based in hotel lobbies, which displays video clips and information on tourism ventures. A prototype is currently being trialled in a Heritage hotel in Christchurch. “It’s going well; the concierges like it,” Dockrill says. “We’ve had our first order for ten, which should be delivered by the end of April and we’ll be trying to sell them offshore.”