Louise Rutten -Inkspot Digital Ltd
Louise is the driving force behind Inkspot Digital Ltd – an Auckland based IT / Animation / Entertainment company leading the world in computer animation. This small youthful company works alongside big players such as Microsoft and shows the world what a couple of Kiwi’s can achieve when the put their minds to it. For Louise, the secrets to success don’t lie behind a university degree or loads of investment capital – success comes from lots of hard work, personality, and undying belief in your idea.
With Inkspot Digital we saw an opportunity in the market for a clipart product for people like myself who can’t draw at all. In fact, all our sales and marketing materials use my appalling stick figures drawings as an example – “if you draw like this, then you need this product!” We wanted to produce something different, and to that end all our products have our personality stamped on them. They are very cartoony type characters and you will either love them or hate them. We are not ashamed of that – we were never trying to appeal to the entire audience. We were confident a percentage of the market would take it and think “Wow, that’s really cool”.
There were a lot of differentiating factors between our product and everything else that was on the market. We researched it and decided there was a gap we could fill. Most people do market analysis to find their biggest competitors and then try to figure out how they can compete with them. We took a different approach and looked at who the biggest players were in the marketplace and thought “Ok, we want to play with them.” You can’t compete with someone like Microsoft. So we went and saw Microsoft with the aim of working alongside them and they were fantastic. We launched our first product in association with Publisher 98.
Ever since that first deal, our business has always been based on finding out who are the biggest players in the market, then working alongside them and using our products to enhance what they are doing. This is how we’ve been able to advance and grow in the IT industry. In the US we work with the biggest IT companies, which is definitely a strong suit.
We are a very youthful company – I was 26 years old when we started. The oldest person in the company now is the CEO, who’s 32 years old. I fully believe that age has nothing to do with it. It’s all about attitude – particularly in the IT industry where everything is constantly changing. Another advantage in us all being so young is that we were able to learn and make mistakes and nobody judged each other. We’ve always allowed ourselves to make mistakes and sometimes that’s cost us money but we’ve never blamed each other if something goes wrong. I think most people are their own hardest taskmasters anyway, you can’t say anything to someone who’s made a mistake that they haven’t already thought to themselves but ten times worse.
The main key to being successful in business, I think, is you have to have so much belief in yourself, you can’t take on board other people’s insecurities. There will always be people out there who will think “that’s a bit different, a bit risky, too difficult, too expensive”. That’s where a lot of people with good ideas fall over. Their great ideas never get to market because they don’t fully believe in themselves, or they’re not prepared to take the risk. People are always complaining there isn’t enough capital in New Zealand to get ideas off the ground, and I agree with that to a certain extent but it’s also a case of natural attrition. It is hard work, you will have to work long hours, there will be setbacks – are you cut out for it? You need an absolute undying belief in yourself right from the start to be able to last the distance.
Excerpt from Louise Rutten’s story
Go Girl Go! – Real Stories of New Zealand Women in Business
By Jacqui Thomas
Published 2001, JT Publishing Ltd
