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Boy Wonder
It takes nerve for a person to tie his livelihood to an industry in freefall.
Smart Money
Jess McCuan
In 2002 — two years after the Internet carnage had begun — Reid Carr and his wife Amy did exactly that. They scraped together a significant amount of cash and launched San-Diego-based Red Door Interactive, an Internet advertising agency and web-design service. At the time, neither the Carrs nor their two partners, Kelly Abbott and Jeannie Metz-Fratoni, had yet turned 30.
All told, Red Door didn't seem destined for success.
And yet the agency has prospered. In an early effort to "look big," the young crew gambled its seed money on a funky 2,000-square-foot industrial loft in downtown San Diego, a much tonier office space than they could afford at the time. They also splurged on slick business cards with rounded edges to match the company logo. Sure, there was a bit of bravado in these decisions. "We wanted to prove that we weren't just dipping our toe in the water," Reid Carr explains.
Clients took the bait. Within months, Red Door landed an Irvine, Calif., division of electronics-giant Toshiba as its first major customer. Toshiba's Network Products Division was looking to redesign its web site and launch new marketing campaigns for telephony-enabled cable modems and wireless home-networking products. Red Door delivered, and the Toshiba NPD group marketing manager offered a ringing endorsement of the firm, which Red Door smartly posted on its web site. It didn't take long for the word about Red Door to spread among San Diego businesses.
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In 2002, Red Door generated revenues of only $182,000. By the end of the next year, it produced $630,000 in revenues. And at the end of last year, the crew banked $2.1 million. According to Carr, the 30-employee company is on course to generate $3.5 million in revenue in 2005. Today, major clients include mostly California-based businesses like gourmet cookie-dough retailer Michael's Cookies, Mirabella Mansori, a day spa, and Sharp Systems of America, a division of Sharp Electronics based in Huntington Beach, Calif.
Not bad for a 28-year-old entrepreneur. Carr says his youth — and the youth of his partners — has worked to their advantage over the years. For example, since day one Carr sought advice from more senior small-business owners in the community. "I basically solicited them, saying, 'I need someone to lean on,'" says Carr. He'd tell them how old he was and that he was starting a business, and would ask for guidance. Among other things, they taught him about the softer side of public relations, offering advice on which San Diego associations to join and which nonprofits to donate time and web services for.
Whereas some 28-year-olds could find the responsibilities of running a business with 30 employees overwhelming, Carr relishes the experience. He's a consummate marketer, polished and unflappable. He prides himself on the fact that he skipped the B-school route (he has a bachelor's degree in advertising from University of Oregon). Before starting Red Door, he moved up the ranks of various web companies and PR agencies. "I was the youngest person in the management group by half," says Carr with confidence.
Carr recently reduced his work schedule from roughly 100 hours a week to a mere 70. That still doesn't leave much time for fun. But he makes sure to budget for regular soccer games with his buddies. The conversations there tend to drift toward general mid-to-late-20s angst. Friends lament their slow crawl up the corporate ladder and the sheer stupidity of some of their bosses.
"I'm going, 'Maybe your boss has a good reason why he's doing those things,'" says Carr. That might sound odd coming from a typical 20-something, but not from this precocious entrepreneur.
| Web Master | |
 Name:Reid Carr |
Name of business: Red Door Interactive Year founded: 2002 Business type (industry): Internet Location: San Diego, CA No. of employees: 30 Web address: http://www.reddoor.biz |
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Please tell us a little bit about your business. What is its purpose? Who are your clients or customers? What is your mission statement? We serve as a guide on our clients' paths toward e-business. We are their outsourced Internet department, working on a multi-department level. We help clients attract new customers, create efficiencies within their organizations, and maintain great customer relationships. We take a creative approach to solving business challenges, and we utilize cutting-edge tools and resources to keep clients ahead of their competitors — especially in the areas of traffic-driving mechanisms, lead acquisition and business-process management. We draw from myriad tools and technologies to give clients the technology and ideas they can grow on. We also package those tools in usable interfaces and creative, "brandable" concepts. Our core client segments are medium-sized businesses, divisions of large corporations and venture-capital-backed companies. Clients currently include Intuit's TurboTax business unit, Buck Knives, Sharp Systems of America (a division of Sharp Electronics), Souplantation & SweetTomatoes, SkinMedica and others. Why did you choose to go into business for yourself? What was your biggest challenge during the start-up phase? What's the smartest move you've made regarding your small business? What's the most foolish? What do you know now that you wish you had known when you started? I have a lot yet to learn, but I prefer to learn through experience. Otherwise, I would have gone back to school for more education. What keeps you up at night? (Which costs and expenses are you most worried about? What do you see as the biggest threats to your business?) Where do you look for business advice? (Mentors? Industry or trade groups? Family and friends?) Who is your favorite entrepreneur and why? What is the best business book you've ever read? What did you like about it? | |
