SYRACUSE — Breakthrough Design Group, an anchor tenant at the South Side Innovation Center, expects to double its business this year and add new staff members. Breakthrough provides Web-design services and got its start in 2008. Tison Kelley, the firm’s founder and executive director of business development, says the company has been doubling its revenue […]
SYRACUSE — Breakthrough Design Group, an anchor tenant at the South Side Innovation Center, expects to double its business this year and add new staff members.
Breakthrough provides Web-design services and got its start in 2008. Tison Kelley, the firm’s founder and executive director of business development, says the company has been doubling its revenue about every six months since 2009.
The staff is up to five people, including four at the South Side Innovation Center, where the firm now occupies about half the facility’s second floor. Kelley says Breakthrough will probably add another three people in 2013.
The firm’s average project size has grown from $1,000 to $8,000 to $10,000, says Miles Dudgeon, executive producer at Breakthrough. The work also includes a handful of much larger projects in the $18,000 to $20,000 range.
The company originally came to the South Side Innovation Center three years ago for assistance, Kelley says. The firm is now represented on the facility’s board of directors and serves as a consultant and mentor to the small businesses and entrepreneurs who come to the center for help.
“It gives us the opportunity to help out other organizations that need it,” Kelley says. “We’re more of a partner with the center now.”
The center is a project of Syracuse University’s Martin J. Whitman School of Management. It provides services including office space and equipment, intensive hands-on training and counseling, roundtables, networking, classroom courses, business plan development, and more.
Breakthrough’s roster of clients includes nonprofit entities and for-profit businesses of varying sizes. The firm says it has worked with 150 clients and has 60 live websites online now.
Kelley says the company focuses on organizations looking for high-end design but that want to be able to edit the content of their sites themselves. And although there is no shortage of Web-design firms, there are few that can deliver first-rate work at the same time they give their customers the ability to manage the sites on their own, he adds.
Breakthrough also focuses on outlining and delivering specific client goals through their sites.
“So if you just want a website, we’re probably not a good fit,” Kelley says.
But if a client has specific aims it wants to achieve through its site, Breakthrough can help, he adds. Those goals could include increasing a nonprofit group’s donor base or boosting a corporation’s reach in social media.
It’s important, Kelley says, to design with those goals in mind and then give clients the ability to track results as well.
Kelley says Breakthrough’s growth will probably begin to level off in the next few years. But the company is preparing to launch a new business in 2013 that has strong potential.
The business, built around a software project, involves a group of McDonald’s franchisees, Kelley says. The effort will involve some new hiring, he adds.
He declined to discuss details of the work since the business is not yet launched.
