At last year’s How to Web, we had our conference Twitter wall delivered by the FatDUX guys in Croatia – a successful product called, Wall Of Tweets (WOT). We kept in touch and caught word of big changes happening in the Zagreb office. The guys decided to part ways with the FatDUX group and continue business as a self-standing company called UX Passion.
We had a talk about the reasons behind the separation, how that affected business and how life in Zagreb and in the UX Passion offices is, with Vibor Cipan, UX Passion CEO and Partner. Before joining the FatDUX team, Vibor worked at the Microsoft Development Center in Copenhagen.
How to Web: What were the reasons behind the separation from the FatDUX group? How was the separation supposed to benefit the business?
Vibor Cipan: We had started our business with FatDUX in late 2009 as a franchise of some sort. We were promised large scale independence and ability to freely conduct and lead our business and management in general, and all of that was working pretty good for quite some time. However, we were also promised large network and really interesting projects on a worldwide basis. As a team of really young and enthusiastic guys we were happy to have been given that opportunity. Nevertheless, it soon surfaced out to us that all our clients and projects had to be brought in by ourselves. And, truth be told, we were extremely successful in doing that and we became profitable within 6 months.
We kept growing and expanding the markets and soon we figured out that we are getting almost all our customers through my blog, UX Passion and our Linkedin profiles as well as through the Twitter. Promised network of FatDUX brought us exactly zero job opportunities. At the time website of the Group was in very poor shape (and it still is) and we kept asking for it to be up and running for over 14 months! We hoped to have our site in English since 95% of our clients and 98% of our revenue was basically from EU, USA and UK – very small percentage was from Croatia. So having a website in English was crucial for our business growth. We were met with very limited understanding of our needs at that point, however I do understand needs that Group was looking for and trying to protect at that time.
Therefore we suggested we start a new brand and cooperate closely with FatDUX but to be completely independent. Just as other virtual FatDUX offices around the world (there are not real incorporated entities, Zagreb was actually incorporated) are run by people owning their own brand or working at third party firms. We were interested in the same arrangement.
So, all we really wanted was to have the same approach – our own brand that would utilize the possible potential of the FatDUX in very limited circumstances. That was not something FatDUX Group management was ready to accept. We tried and offered several solutions and suggestions and they were declined. Then we decided to part our ways and Zagreb office was officially terminated and we are ordered to release the rights on FatDUX brand. Which we happily did.
Looking back today I can say that this was probably the smartest business thing we ever did. We knew that being free was great and since we’ve built all our business and client relationships without any help of FatDUX whatsoever, we had not lost a single client – we even gained several new international ones. I can tell you, it took some guts to stand for your passion and freedom and now it’s paying off. And not just in terms of economic incentives – but rather in sky-high team morale.
And also, probably the most important thing – we are here to change the world of user experience, one pixel at the time and to re-architect the experiences and world we are enjoying on mobile, web, desktop and all other platforms today – both online and off. And to do that you must have that creative and organizational freedom, that environment that can help out and release unlimited potential of both user experience in general and people who’ll be using something we’ve crafted or helped out in the process. Nothing really compares to that.
How to Web: What is your relation with FatDUX? Are you competitors now?
Vibor Cipan: Oh, absolutely we are! And that’s a great thing. We were hoping for partnership to have mutual benefits but this turned out to be a great outcome for us. Since we always considered the world to be our playground where we are envisioning, designing and delivering greatest possible user experiences on all platforms, with passion, and since FatDUX presents themselves as global player, we are, by destiny competitors.
With over 400 million people around the planet using something that we had crafted and built parts of ourselves in it, I think we are doing pretty good job in competing in global market. After all, it’s fun! But the game has just started for us!
And it’s getting even funnier these days when I’ve learned that FatDUX will open their franchise in Zagreb again. I don’t think that’s really smart business decision since it might cause some confusion with the name and related matters but as I said, it’s all fun and we accept it that way. We will be fair but tough competitors (laugh)
How to Web: Now, after a few months since the separation, how is business going? Was it the right decision?
Vibor Cipan: As I have said, we suggested several ways to continue working with FatDUX and they had all been rejected. Now, we are glad it happened that way. We’ve just finished Q3 of 2011 and it was our record breaking quarter. Wall of Tweets had a surge that no one could anticipate and our plans for 2012 are even more optimistic. I’d suggest to anyone considering taking up an existing brand or starting a new one to skip the step we had taken, embrace the new brand and build something on their own right away! It feels just awesome; it gives the team that super-positive charge and dynamics and sets you on a right path to success. You know how they say – Just do it!
How to Web: How is WOT doing? Please tell me a bit about the app and any new cool features you might have added.
Vibor Cipan: What? Oh, WOT! (laugh) Wall of Tweets aka WOT is our twitterwall solution. Hands-down it’s the best and most powerful solution on the market right now. We are approaching our third major release due in December, and we have adopted a really agile method of pushing incremental minor versions regularly out. For example few weeks ago we’ve added support for geolocation service Foursquare. What this means is that for example, if you are now at the some conference venue and you are looking at the Wall of Tweets displaying significant tweets, you can enable your attendees to check in on their smartphones and then see their check-ins on the Wall. And that’s just one thing – we have added support for customized tweets – feature that was very popular and used by one of our clients – European Union – they wanted to have the special-looking tweet when President Herman Van Rompuy was tweeting. Then we extended that for WebFest.me conference to enable bloggers and journalists to have their logos appear next to their names… There are many features in the pipeline but let’s keep some of them secret for now, ok?
How to Web: What are you working on besides WOT?
Vibor Cipan: WOT was started as our side-project and now has grown significantly. However, we are first and foremost a user experience company. We help businesses come up with great new solutions or improve existing ones, we build user experiences on all modern platforms – mostly on mobile and web these days. We help our customers design, develop and deploy best possible user experiences, we do a lot of usability research and testing as well as content strategy and analytics work. One of the major pillars of our business model is management and business consulting in terms of innovation, product and service design and strategy. It is certainly very exciting helping companies deliver great experiences and make their customers and users passionate about their products and services just like we are when we are designing and crafting those wonderful experiences. But in the essence, we are here to re-architect and re-imagine user experiences in a long term. And we are not limiting ourselves to any specific platform or technology. This is a massive challenge but we are very realistic about it and we have the persistence that’s needed, passion that’s the key driver of our past, present and future successes and really awesome and talented people abroad my team. I’m very confident in what we are doing and what we are going to do next.
How to Web: What markets do you mostly do business with?
Vibor Cipan: We are everywhere, really. We do tend to have a focus on Europe, in UK, Germany, Netherlands, France, and Scandinavia but also USA. However, WOT has been everywhere – from Croatia, Romania, UK to Brazil, some remote town in Alaska, China, South Korea and all the way down to Madagascar and Australia. The only place we are still trying to get a hold of? Well, Antarctica. Maybe some day…
How to Web: How’s life in Zagreb? Do you encounter any difficulties due to your geographic position?
Vibor Cipan: Life in Zagreb is really good. We can’t really say that we’ve encountered any difficulties with our location – somehow we’ve been always able to find, attract and develop our business relationships with clients from all over the world. But not everything is great. Croatian administration is really slow, there’s way too much paperwork, incentives for startups and highly potent companies are virtually not existing, and while we are successfully fighting and winning the global competitive markets, we had not been recognized and supported by our own country. But hey, that’s what it makes it a challenge to a certain degree and definitely it is something that has made us stronger and much more resilient – a very specific trait that’s very helpful when you are competing globally.
How to Web: How long has it been, since you left Copenhagen for Zagreb? If you could go back in time, would you change anything?
Vibor Cipan: Oh it’s been a while. I’ve left Microsoft in Copenhagen in early fall of 2009 and then started FatDUX in Zagreb together with my best friends and very dear guys – Antun Debak (our CD – Creative Director) and Darko Čengija (our CIA – Chief Information Architect). We kind of like those abbreviations. Microsoft experience was a terrific one. I had a great team there, my managers at that time, Jakob Nielsen and Hans Roed Mark, were really supportive guys and people who have showed my all ups and downs of user experience design and usability. I still have very dear and warm memories of my team in Copenhagen. Would I change anything? That’s a good one.
I believe that there are no things that one should regret – even if the experience was not the most successful and greatest one it was still a valuable lesson that you could learn. That’s my life philosophy and certainly something that I tend to share with people in UX Passion. Even if I could travel back in time, I wouldn’t want to skip the FatDUX part of the story – then I wouldn’t know what I know today (laugh) and that’s very useful experience…
Oh, and PS. We’ll be using UX Passion’s Wall Of Tweets at this year’s How to Web conference too! 
We are very proud of presenting you the wonderful international team of “Official Bloggers” coming from 8 countries all over Central and Eastern Europe!
