September 12, 2011
By the ZippyCart Content Team
PixelMags is an online publishing powerhouse that specializes in taking your magazine or catalog for you ecommerce solution and bringing it into the 21st Century. They can help you add other media, interaction, and other advanced features to what used to be a static document. Keeping things fluid and dynamic is the name of the game for online publications and ecommerce solutions alike. We were lucky enough to sit down with Ryan Marquis, co-founder and COO of PixelMags:
So right off the bat, let’s get into this. PixelMags is unique in that you provide a powerful service for two very different groups: retailers who want fully-featured catalog apps for their businesses, and also publishers who want sleek, functional, sharp-looking publications (I’ve got that right, right?). Can you talk a little bit about the processes that your team employs when serving these two different groups, or are they more similar than one might initially think?
They are as similar as they are different in terms of magazines and catalog clients, depending on what the publisher/client is looking for. Most clients that we have worked with haven’t evolved into what we call “interactive tablet content.” This means building an HTML5 catalog, or by using a provider such as Adobe or WoodWing. A majority of publishers are sticking to the standard PDF format, and producing a replica catalog. Where we come into play with that is we take the PDF, and with our CDS (content delivery software) tool kit, we make these PDFs into fully interactive catalogs.
We like to call the tool kit we have developed “unlimited.” Clients can have videos, slide shows, catalogs, links, 360-degree product rotation and so forth. Some of the catalogs that are utilizing these features are Pottery Barn, Restoration Hardware, FrontGate and LampsPlus. All of our catalogs have utilized our white label solution, which is basically saying that our logo and name are taken out of the application to make it appear is if the magazine or catalog themselves made the application out of their own office. It gives the publisher all of the identity, giving the consumer more confidence to shop and buy.
We have also integrated the catalog ecommerce system, which allows people to shop and purchase products right from the application. I am not going to put any numbers out, but Pottery Barn has seen a rise in sales and has seen millions of dollars in increased revenue. You can touch a couch on the interactive catalog, read more about it, and decide if you want to buy it without ever leaving the application.
When it comes to magazine publishers, a lot of those same features are available and have been utilized by using our CDS tool kit. Being able to pull videos from YouTube is a great feature that allows readers to take the reading experience farther than before. Of course, all of our apps are compliant with Apple’s new polices for iOS5 and the upcoming Newsstand. With all the features of auto-renew subscription SKU’s, background downloading and other specifications. We put a press release out announcing this recently in August.
Magazines present their material differently than catalogers. Magazine publishers I would say are little more adventurous than others as far as trying new interactive content. That is one of the unique things about PixelMags compared to any of the providers in our space. We have designed our approach to be a digital distribution company. When I say that, I mean publishers have the choice to upload any form of content they wish. They can start with a PDF, and three months down the line they can transfer over to Adobe. Using the PixelMags destruction platform for a publisher, it allows them to start with a PDF and evolve into interactive content, meaning Adobe, WoodWing or even HTML5. Our reader within our application accepts all forms of input, which is very critical for both publisher and consumer.
We are the only provider in our space that is currently offering this evolution process. Typically, if you have been live for a year, and you try to switch from PDF to WoodWing or HTML5, you are not going to be able to just substitute one format to the other. You would have to shutdown that application completely, build an entirely new application, and then try converting the consumers that you already have to your new application. It is not an easy process, and it can have very big consequences. With our platform and distribution model, we have alleviated that nightmare of having a consumer transfer, making the process seamless.
Who are some retail clients that you’ve found it particularly interesting to work with?
Pottery Barn has been great to work with. LampsPlus is a great client, and they are doing a lot of innovative stuff, both with their digital content and even in their store. We also offer a web-based reader for our clients, where consumers can read their catalog on a website, like a page flipper. What’s unique about our platform is that whatever a publisher creates in our CDS tool kit will automatically upload to the application and onto their web base version too. They create in one location, and they can distribute it to multiple outlets. With LampsPlus, we have built a kiosk for them. So when consumers go into their store, and they do not have an iPad with them, they will be able to go to a kiosk in the store and be able to view the same interactive content on a web based kiosk that we developed for their iPad. Once again, Pottery Barn is great, Restoration Hardware is great, FrontGate is great, and same with LampsPlus. All great clients to work with as far as retail clients go.
How was the integration with Apple Newsstand? What have your customers been saying since you brought your services to that platform?
They have all been pretty ecstatic about it actually. We have a couple hundred clients now, and it’s a very big transition. We are focusing on the bigger clients right now, like Hearst UK and other ones to help integrate into Apple Newsstand. There is a lot of confusion though on Apple Newsstand. A lot of people actually think its an application, when in essence it’s a folder that is going to aggregate auto-renew subscription SKU’s and organize your magazine subscription. We have been working with Apple now for almost three years, and recently working more closely than before, making sure that we are doing everything right for when the Newsstand launches.
But beyond Apple – your website says “Android coming soon.” The Android OS is growing crazy-fast. I know that you and your team decided to focus on the iPad and iPhone because they are such well-designed devices and use such similar operating systems (I actually read a previous interview where you talked about the complexity of writing what is essentially two different apps in one). Android has some problems in that arena: a million different devices, different versions of the OS running all over the place, etc. How are you and the team dealing with that?
Great question. Android OS is growing very rapidly, and we are getting a ton of inquires from publishers about consumers wanting the app and magazine to be available to them on the Android. You have to take a step back though, which is what we have done, and evaluate the space. To develop on Apple, Android, Blackberry or any other OS system for tablets and smart phones out there, you need to know the install base, (how many consumers have this installed) and also the user experience. Android is an open source OS that tablet manufactures no matter if you are Samsung or some random developer out of China, can run and install this OS on their tablet device. As a digital distributor, I can go to China tomorrow, have a tablet built with Android OS running on it in a few weeks. Does that mean I am going to have a big install base or quality tablet? So getting back to the question, we are focusing on Android, but we are going to developing Android OS that running 3.0 or higher, like Honeycomb, and will narrow it done to specific tablets. We will use tablets with a good consumer adoption rate and a good quality name behind it. The Samsung Galaxy tablet and Motorola zoom are the first two tablets in that market that we are going to focus on.
Speaking of the team, how big is your group, all offices included? How quickly have you had to grow? What advice can you give our readers about adding new members to your team?
We have offices in the US, UK and in the South Pacific. In the US, we have ten employees. In the United Kingdom we have 13 employees, and three people in New Zealand and Australia. We have had to grow very quickly. The company is still relatively young, we are almost three years old. It has grown from my partner Mark and I to 26 employees now.
The advice I can give to readers about adding new members to our team, or in this industry in general is that we are always looking for good people. When we interview people, we go off their work and their work history. We don’t really focus on where someone went to school; we choose to focus on performance. You need to have a strong digital background, and be on top of what is going on in our industry, especially in the tablet world. We are currently looking for Java script developers, iOS developers and Android developers.
What has been one challenge that you and the team have had to overcome that gave you all a huge sense of accomplishment? How did you do it? What was so significant about the challenge? What did you all learn through the experience?
The biggest challenge in this space is the iOS platform. When we first started the business, it was just my partner Mark and I. Our biggest challenge, to be honest and totally upfront, was just starting the business. It took us nine and half months to get our initial software application developed and approved by Apple. We probably went back and forth with Apple with dozens of revisions of how our database works with the Apple infrastructure, and how a new issue is delivered, and how notifications are delivered. Setting up the whole infrastructure, the whole content delivery network was a challenge. We actually use Amazon as our delivery method. So when someone clicks download on an application, that content is actually streamed from Amazon’s cloud streaming network. There were a lot of different pieces that had to be put together. The biggest challenge was to build the initial platform, and the ongoing challenge is of course, maintenance, and adhering to Apple’s new regulations, especially when a new OS launches. Through this process we have learned how to work hard and how to drink a heck of a lot of Redbull!
Jack Cieslak grew up in New York State where he attended the New School, emerging with a degree in Creative Writing. Seattle drew him in with its focus on personal health and fitness, as well as the environment, and of course the great weather. Three-thousand miles later he is all dug in and ready to throw himself wholeheartedly into writing of all types - including reporting new developments in e-commerce, and places where social media and e-commerce cross paths. Jack revels in a challenge, whether it's writing, running, or lifting heavy objects - Jack says "bring it."
