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Family: Cook’s Doors & Windows – Interfanatic Customer Spotlight

Everyone needs a house to live in, but a supportive family is what builds a home.”

Anthony Liccione

According to the descendants of George & Charles Merriam and Noah Webster, a quality is an inherent feature. By that definition, the inherent feature we celebrate this week at Interfanatic is that of family. As such, family is definitely an inherent feature of this collective business, with our associates and clientele.

Family is a bond. Family is a way of doing things.

“Okay, sure,” you say. But a lot of companies blather on about how they treat their customers “like family.”

But do a lot of companies, before they begin work in earnest, spend two hours, or twelve hours, getting to know their customers?

Interfanatic does.

Family: An Interfanatic Quality

Whether our customer is a $100/mo customer or a $150,000 project customer, we spend tremendous getting to know them. Understanding their business. Understanding what they love about it, and how we can best help them accomplish their long-term and short-term goals.

And yes, we spend at least two hours, but sometimes as long as twelve or more hours getting to know our customers, their tastes, and their business.

And that’s a turn off for some people. They see us as problem solvers. We’re here to quickly and efficiently solve their problems.

But we feel that without knowing our clients properly, we can’t make the best decisions for their long-term interest. We’re in this for decades-long relationships, not a week-long or a month-long one. We take your business and our part in it very seriously.

Which may be why we have customer relationships that span a decade or two. They’re our favorite customers because they give us the privilege to make them that way.

Cook’s Doors & Windows: A Business Built on Family

We really enjoyed our time working with Cook’s Doors and Windows, in Lawndale, CA on Hawthorne Boulevard.

Cook Lumber started out as a family business in 1923. It evolved when sons Bob and Jim Cook took their portion of the business and turned into one that sold doors and windows to Southern California.

“We’re in this for decades-long relationships… [w]e take your business and our part in it very seriously.”

– Interfanatic Digital Marketing with Web Site Maintenance & Design

We got to work with Jim and Bob Cook over ten years ago. And though we’ve parted ways, the website we built for them worked well for their business until just this month.

We’re grateful for the opportunity and to play a part in this company’s storied history.

Interfanatic Web Site Management: We’re the Long-term, Trustworthy Resource

For businesses that recognize that their website and digital marketing are integral to their operations, we are the excellent resource. So many companies that do what we do last a few months, or a year, and disappear into the ether.

I can’t tell you how many times a business owner will come to us and say, “I can’t get a hold of our web guy anymore, he just won’t answer the phone”, or, “well, our web girl got a job with a big company and doesn’t have time for us anymore.”

Our business was designed around providing excellent service over the long-term. We keep our people around as long as we can. And our customers don’t have to deal with a revolving door – they deal with one person – for a very, very long time.

Our website management services have always been value-packed. But the truth is, to people who have been through the rigamaroles we’re talking about here, us just being around consistently and doing our job IS our greatest value proposition.

Interfanatic & Family

And all of that is to say that, yes, indeed: we treat our customers like family. Because they are.


This week’s image:
Interfanatic‘s founder, Ryan Delane, takes or creates every image you see in our social feed.

Ha! I took this one years ago. We were out for a sail on a friend’s boat when we stumbled upon this clan orh-ing it up in Redondo Beach’s King Harbor. It reminds my of my own father, who does an excellent vocal impression and would fit right in on this buoy if he so chose.

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Love: Laguna Seca Raceway – Interfanatic Customer Spotlight

Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.”

Aristotle

A single soul inhabiting two bodies. A beautiful thought… It reminds of marriage vows… and of racing a motor car.

You probably have a different thought when you think of racing a motor car than I do. But doing it well is especially reflective of a beautiful love affair.

When you’re racing a car, when you’re in the zone, you feel the cars tires as an extension of your own body. The two of you become one and glide fluidly through space, without drama. Everything else disappears and the lap times fall, relentlessly.

At first, it’s just you, and your car. Then, the car becomes you, and it’s just you. It all just happens.

So it is with Laguna Seca Raceway. I think they call it WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca these days. But when we designed and built an incredibly high-tech, forward thinking website for them fifteen years ago, it was Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca.

The track, at the time, was run by SCRAMP: love for motorsport and the cherished circuit inhabiting many bodies. Now, there will always be protagonists and antagonists, but the fact remains: everyone does it because they love racing.

Love: An Interfanatic Quality

We designed and built an incredible website for them. It was incredibly high-tech and advanced for its time. Some thought too advanced. Perhaps a little before its time. But we created Laguna Seca’s site with love.

Interfanatic created Laguna Seca’s site with love.”

If you don’t know Laguna Seca, let me try to explain it to you.

In the middle of an Army ordinance range, some crazy folks decided to create a racetrack. They ran a ribbon of gray asphalt around a small brown mountain. Then they hurled their bright red, blue, orange, yellow, and silver sporty cars around that ribbon of asphalt. And it became racing. And it was good.

Laguna Seca has a character all its own. If you know what I’m talking about, skip ahead. There are only so many descriptions of the corkscrew a real racer can take. But if you don’t…

After coaxing your beast up the back of the hill, it reaches the top, breathless. It’s time to dig your heel hard into the binders and dance your hands and feet into second gear. A hard left and the world disappears beneath you as you lift off the brakes and accelerate. Your steed searches for footing, you gently coax her right and catch third in the air. When she settles in, you’re heading to a fast left with all hell screaming behind you.

When Phil Hill first hit that fast left in the Chapparel 2J, everyone held their collective breaths. There was NO WAY he could make it through Turn 9 at that mach number. But he did. And Jim Hall was right, and ground effect in motorsport was borne.

It’s a track filled with history. Young James Dean passed on driving his Porsche to Laguna Seca. Mark Donahue hustled the mighty “if you can leave two black stripes from the exit of one corner to the braking zone of the next, you have enough horsepower” 917/30 there. And Alex Zanardi gadzooked Bryan Herta, turning his IndyCar into a rally machine to make a nutty pass stick for the win.

It’s a place I kinda grew up.

Laguna Seca Raceway: A Project We Cannot Forget

So when Laguna Seca approached Interfanatic (nee Web Site Maintenance & Design) after hearing Carroll Smith crow about our site, it was a thrilling moment.

We love doing cutting edge. We love doing what can’t be done. And we, like the people behind Laguna Seca, love racing.

This week’s image:
Interfanatic‘s founder, Ryan Delane, takes or creates every image you see in our social feed.

To make up for last week’s screenshot, this week we have a real photograph. An image of love. I took this slide with love; love for my father, love for motor racing, and love for photography. This, for me, has everything. I took this photograph at a dinky little throwback track called Moroso. It was phenomenal. I remember there wasn’t much in the way of safety back then. As I recall there were gators in a culvert at one of the turn exits. You didn’t want to get upside-down there (not that you would want to get shiny-side down anywhere). But apparently some guy got himself eaten after tipping over there the month before. But the lack of guardrails and corner-workers who gave a damned what I did allowed me to do this. To get the image I wanted. And, for me, it remains glorious.

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Industry: M A Trading – Interfanatic Customer Spotlight

“Sloth makes all things difficult, but industry all things easy.”

Benjamin Franklin

Well now, hold your horses there Ben. Excuse me, poor Richard! It doesn’t make things easy, but industry certainly makes things easier…

Industry – doing things regularly and efficiently – does make things easier. But it doesn’t get any easier than sloth. Of course, nothing gets done with sloth, and everything gets done better with industry. But doing nothing will always be easier than getting things done.

That’s why we have vacation.

Industry: This Week’s Interfanatic Virtue

Keeping at it. Grinding away. Keeping your head down. These are the recipe of industry and, when focused on useful work, a primary element required to get things done.

At Interfanatic, we’re all about the unglamourous side of things – the industry of getting work done with positive long-term and short-term results. It’s not sexy. It’s not exciting. But we’re results-driven.

Industry in Action: M A Trading

When MA Trading came to us a few years ago requesting that we put their various catalogs on-line, they immediately impressed us with their industry. They’ve found a way to take artisans from all over the world and help them reliably and predictably create beautiful, hand-made home decor. It’s industry at scale, and it’s beautiful.

It was our pleasure to bring their websites into the modern era. They had, like so many of our clients, tried to get away with doing things the cheap way, and it blew up in their face. We got the right people on the job and created something both useful and beautiful for them and their customers. It was great working with them.

We love working with companies all over the world. And, as in this case, local companies, too. Their offices are just up the street from ours, in southern Redondo Beach, in the south part of Los Angeles, California. We’re on Skype calls at all hours of the day and night dealing with fabulous clients, so there’s something warming about getting to drive (or even walk) up the street to shake hands with a good customer you’ve gotten to know so well.

Walking up the street is not always industrious, but it is pleasant. And that’s what makes life worth living. At Interfanatic, we do the industry so we can afford the pleasant company of our great customers. Like M A Trading.

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Ingenuity: Rockwell Medical Supply – Interfanatic Customer Spotlight

Emenike says it: success comes from a combination of things. One of those primary ingredients is ingenuity. Unless you’re the only gig in town, it’s hard to be successful without a unique and compelling proposition.

Thinking about all of this immediately triggered a memory of Rockwell Medical Supply. What a great company! Lean and mean, and an ingenious method of selling. They outsmarted their competitors.

Rockwell has since been sold and merged into another company, accomplishing a dream of the founders.

Rockwell Medical Supply: A Great American Success Story of Ingenuity

Rockwell knew that their customers cared about certain products, and less about others. They also knew that in an extremely competitive field, they were hard-pressed to beat the competition with such tight margins. So they focused on their customers first, giving them what they needed at the price they wanted, and made up for tight margins in other ways.

It was ingenious, and it worked.

We designed and built an attractive, functional Magento-based website for Rockwell many years ago, long before ownership sold. Crucially, it was functional in the complicated way that it handled each customer. It wasn’t easy, but we all made it work. And work it did.

It wasn’t easy, but we all made it work. And work it did.

We love coming up with novel solutions for problems.

That’s one of the reasons we refuse to get stuck in a niche – you learn something new from every customer – when you listen.

And we listen.

We’ve already congratulated the Rockwell Team on their incredible success, but what they hey, we’ll do it again. Congrats on your fantastic achievement, Rockwell Medical Supply! And congratulations more on giving your customer exactly what they wanted – in an ingenious way nobody else could.

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