What does it take to make it to the top of the list Entrepreneur's Top 15 Million-Dollar Ideas? ID Society's idea: provide clients with a "corporate identity" by creating not just company logos, business cards and stationery, but also some of the most innovate Web designs out there. That's a good idea. But when you meet Adam Berkowitz and his partner, Jonathan Webb, you know that their company is successful because at their office it's one good idea after another.
Good idea: Jon came up with a way to offer anyone who had Internet access and wanted to create a business card or corporate logo the opportunity to do so. He had created graphic images that were then trademarked. Users would select one of these images, couple it with a typeface they liked, then customize the look of their corporate logo by adding color, shadows, and the like. Viola! A corporate identity for under $200.
That was the initial plan for New York City-based ID Society, but the ideas got bigger and better, no doubt due to the creative minds of Adam and Jonathan. Adam, originally from Lynbrook, is an accomplished salesman, with a proven track record in selling everything from spy cameras to Hondas. Jonathan is an artist with a real passion for design. When you put their talents together, the combined energy that flows back and forth seems sufficient to supply the power to run all the computers in their New York City office.
The company is now two years old, a mere baby, but it's growing up fast. "Entrepreneur" magazine says that ID Society expects a 600 percent increase in sales for this year. And the growth of the company has a lot to do with technological advances on the Internet.
John and Adam saw a way to make Web sites come to life using Flash. If you've ever surfed the Web, you've probably seen it. When words appear to float across the screen, you're probably looking at a Flash animation. To see Flash in action, take a look at ID Society's Web site, idsociety.com.
When Adam and Jon saw what Flash could do to produce much more sophisticated-looking Web sites, their real work began. They use Flash to create, in addition to Web sites, advertising banners, screen savers and unique design tools that potential Internet customers use while at the Web site to involve them in the creative process for their many clients.
For a high-end watch company, they designed a tool that lets you build your own watch, selecting the bracelet, the color and shape of the watch face, and so on. "When you get people involved in creating their own product, they're more likely to buy it," Adam says.
For Chivas, the assignment was to teach people how to drink their Scotch. The solution: a gorgeous screen saver that goes beyond looking pretty and actually offers a lesson in mixology. Beautiful cocktail glasses float across the screen. Click on one and you get the recipe for the drink in that glass.
But marketing entails more than design. When Seagram, owner of Captain Morgan's rum, needed to find a way to get an e-mail list fast (they had a mailing list with 10 million names and wanted an Internet-based list as impressive), ID Society came up with a party promotion idea whereby everyone who enters a sweepstakes (at captainsparty.com ) picks 50 friends to invite and adds those fifty e-mail addresses to the list. If everyone on that list forwards the party contest to their friends, the number of web mail addresses that could be collected is substantial.
Adam met Jonathan years ago through mutual friends. They were just acquaintances, but became friends when Jon finished college and moved back to New York. Adam was selling cars when Jonathan, who spent most of his time as a club promoter, started doing Web design work. "My clients always wanted more," Jon says, like better flyers to promote events, and better ways to get their message out there. Jon saw in the Internet the better way to get the job done. It was the first of several Web-based career moves, the most recent of which is ID Society.
For Adam, selling cars was a family obligation of sorts. His family owned dealerships and he was asked to give selling autos a try. If he liked it, he'd get his own dealership.
"I did it for sixth months because it was important to my family," Adam recalls. "I was good at it, but I knew it wasn't what I wanted to do."
Family is important to Adam. Just ask his sister, Audra, a woman whose smile and warmth match her brother's. She works with him at ID Society. Or you can ask his brother, Jeff. Jeff lives
in Massachusetts with his wife, Gweneth. When their child was born with a rare form of muscular dystrophy called myotonic dystrophy, the family rallied to start a foundation in Logan Paige's name. Adam and his ID Society team designed a Web site, LoganPaige.org, to raise awareness. "There's a genetic test for it," Audra explains. "The Web site will educate people about what the disease is and the importance of genetic testing for parents.
Perhaps Adam has a strong sense of family because of what his own family life was like. His parents divorced when he was young and his mother became gravely ill when he was still in high
school. When she succumbed to cancer after a three-year battle, Adam found himself his sister's legal guardian at the tender age of 20.
Jon also lost a parent, and that loss had a profound affect on him. His father died in 1998. Jon was working in advertising at the time. His father's death shook him. "I felt like all the security I had in my life was gone. My father was my security." After his father died, he lost his focus. Soon his client base began to dwindle.
Jonathan says reading the book "Think and Grow Rich" changed everything. "The book says that if you're ready for a change, a message will appear to you." The message that appeared to Jon was a letter his father wrote him the day he died. "My father
told me that no matter what I wanted to do, he'd be there for me."
Jon didn't sleep that night. The next morning, he called Adam with the idea for a company that would offer one-stop shopping for a corporate identity. And ID Society was born.
The ID Society team also makes it their business to create a distinctive look for each site they design. They concern themselves with using related color palettes that create or enhance a mood. So when you're at a site they've created and you click on the button to go to an order form, the next page you see won't look entirely different from the one you were just looking at, as happens with most sites. "A lot of the time people go to order a product online and when they get to the order form, it looks so different from what they were just looking at that they think they're at the wrong site," Adam says. So when the ID Society design team creates a site, all the pages relate visually. "It's important to keep the identity fluent," Adam says.
It's that kind of innovative thinking and attention to detail in Web design that has landed the company big-money accounts like ESPN, the NBA, Columbia House, the New York Post, music licensing giant BMI, consulting firm KPMG and Publishers Clearing House.
And the client list keeps growing, which makes the guys happy. But their success hasn't gone to their heads. It's clear when you talk to them that they have a friendship as successful as their business. They have been through some tough times together, like when Adam decided to stop selling cars and start working with Jon, even though Jon couldn't pay him to start building their client base. And then there was the time Adam convinced Jon to quit his advertising job and start working for himself full-time. Neither made a cent for six months. The two saw each other through it, and the hard times are now just a memory.
"I see real dedication in Adam," Jonathan says.
Adam flashes his winning smile and says, "We spend so much time together here that we're more like a family than co-workers. When you like the people you work with and the work that you do, going to work every day is something you look forward to."
And they're off again, swapping ideas so fast you can only wonder what a busy day at the office is like.
