Webmotion Soars South of the Border

[Ottawa, ONTARIO] Webmotion Inc., which specializes in the design and maintenance of interactive Web sites, is casting a Web that is snaring clients all over the globe, particularly south of the 49th parallel. The Ottawa-based firm just announced a 237 percent revenue increase this year, mostly as a result of sales in the United States.

Webmotion’s software, WebDeployer, allows clients to automate content management, one-to-one marketing and full-service e-commerce.

Incorporated in 1996 with $2,000 in financing, Webmotion’s major partners ran the company out of their apartments in downtown Ottawa. The company was started as the result of a collaborative effort in a chat room between founding members in Canada, the United States and France. Today, Webmotion is receiving accolades including being identified by Profit magazine as one of Canada’s top 10 start-up companies in 1999.

Webmotion’s first client was the Canadian Museum of Civilization, for whom they designed an exhibit about New France, organizing text and graphics about the colony’s history from Jacques Cartier to its pre-Confederation days as Lower Canada. That contract, around Christmas of 1996, provided the founders with enough cash to upgrade their computer network. Subsequently, the company won contracts with several financial concerns in the United States that were in need of interactive Web sites. Webmotion unveiled its Paris office last October.

Although the general financial services area is Webmotion’s specialty, the company’s clientele also includes organizations from the automotive industry and the public sector, and recently secured a contract with the French firm, Novartis, one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world.

Other prestigious clients include Charles Schwab, the Museum of Civilization, and Washington Mutual, several U.S. banks and a leading European automotive company.