Blupurple Interactive Media Ltd., a local website and mobile application design and development company, first started off by offering tailor-made products and services to their clients, but now they have plans to offer standardized products and services to meet the needs of a variety of clients, while at the same time streamlining their operational processes. Steven Lei, project manager of Blupurple Interactive Media Ltd. talked to Business Daily about how the company has evolved and what sort of environment local Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are currently facing. How did the company start? Blupurple Design Ltd. was first established to do graphic design work in March 2012. Seeing the increasing popularity of Internet use, we spotted an opportunity. So in January 2015 Blupurple Interactive Media Ltd. was set up in a bid to capture the fast growing Internet market in the city, mainly in designing and developing Internet website platforms and mobile applications. Did you have any difficulties when you started out? From the beginning, there were so many things for us to learn which we had never experienced before. Gradually, when we got more clients, we also had to increase our number of employees from two to the current six staff we have now. How competitive is the IT industry in Macau? As we are a small-sized enterprise, we don’t see others in the industry as competitors for us. We think it is better for everyone to help each other in the industry rather than to compete with one another. Have you faced any difficulties in operating the company? The high cost of running the business and the lack of human resources are the major obstacles for local SMEs in Macau. However, the Macau SAR Government has supported local SMEs by offering loans, business assistance and funding. What is the most popular mobile application you have created? Prior to the establishment of Blupurple Design Ltd., we started working for other companies in graphic design back in 2010. ‘Macau Movie’ [the app] was first created in 2010. ‘Macau Movie’ provided a listing of movies that were being screened in the city’s cinemas on a daily basis. This mobile application is the most popular mobile application we have created so far, now with more than 160,000 users. Why do you think ‘Macau Movie’ has attracted so many users? When it was launched in 2010, the iPhone 4 had been out for about one year. During that time the iPhone 4 caused a major change in how people used their mobile phones. Also, back then our mobile phones did not have so many functions compared to the smart phones we use nowadays. As a result, more people wanted to download more mobile applications to their mobile phones. How do you increase the number of users of mobile applications? If our mobile application has problems users will not use it anymore. Therefore, we need to provide high quality products and services. In other words, our business model needs to coordinate with our marketing model. For example, the iPhone is a great invention, and at the same time, marketing for the iPhone is also very important in order to attract users. When both models are working together effectively, the product itself will become successful and popular. How do you reach out to new clients? We participate in competitions in order to expand our network with different participants in the industry. We build up our client base by offering high quality products and services and as a result our clients refer us to their friends or new clients. Are more people using mobile applications than websites nowadays? In the past, more people were using Internet browsing websites on their desktops. But now, the increasing number of mobile application users is catching up with the amount of website users. For instance, people now have access to the Internet with their smart devices anytime they want. However, in the past, the peak hours for people getting online were from 7pm to 10pm only. Even after midnight there are still a lot of people using the Internet, which creates a lot of opportunities in the industry for us. How has technology changed the way people do business? More people than ever are using the Internet on their smart phones. This makes us think of other ways of doing things. Technology is a tool to assist businesses to operate more effectively and efficiently. For example, an online website can help companies do a lot of promotions and the operational costs are low. Therefore, online shopping has become a popular trend these days. What is the most difficult project you have worked on? We have noticed there are more companies seeking to create new online shopping websites. However, we find it more challenging to run an online shopping website due to the rigid safety regulations imposed by the local banks. When a user is making an online payment, safety issues need to be considered – such as protecting the user’s credit card information. We need to be cautious when handling users’ personal information online. Therefore, we have to go through many detailed procedures for safety implementation to ensure the privacy of users’ personal information and that it is being protected online. We don’t ask our users to provide their personal information to us, including credit card numbers – their credit card information is only handled by the banks. How do you protect users’ information? We have specific servers installed for our websites and mobile applications to protect the security of our users. We treat this matter very seriously. All the personal and sensitive information from the users is encrypted and saved in a secure database. What projects are you working on now? We are now building an online platform for designers in Asia to exchange their creative ideas. Each designer can upload up to ten items of their work to the website. In the long term, this website platform can build a communication bridge between the sellers and buyers. How did the project develop? At first, we built this for recently graduated designers to upload their work so that they would be able to search for jobs after graduating. But now, after considering the feedback, we are planning to revamp the website for the designers to share their work with each other as a communication platform. Right now, it is still under testing. With this website, we aim to promote the creative industries in Macau by letting other designers comment on each other’s products and share ideas. What are the problems you faced in developing this project? Some users told us that only viewing other designers’ products and services on the website is not comprehensive enough. They hope the website can provide more functions such as searching for freelance designers in the city. Both for companies and designers, finding a designer or getting a design job in Macau is the most common problem they face, as designers are usually referred by their friends or old client to get jobs. Do you have a different approach when working with large corporate clients? From our experience, large corporations tend to have standardized operational procedures for doing business. All the work procedures are fixed and planned with a targeted timeline clearly set out. Working with big corporate clients, we have learned how to standardize and streamline our work processes to make our operational processes more efficient. Working with a big corporate client can certainly help us to learn and grow. How is it different when working with local SMEs? Working for SMEs is more flexible. We can do the brainstorming sessions together with our SME clients as they have less layers of management to go through. They tend to be more receptive to new ideas, whereas, we need to go through many layers of management with large corporate clients in order to have our proposed ideas accepted. Through working with other local SMEs, we exchange ideas with each other, such as sharing our difficulties and experiences in doing business in Macau. How do large corporate clients provide opportunities for your company? When we propose our products and services to the large corporate clients, we first have to go through many layers of decision makers’ approvals. When our proposed ideas finally get accepted by them, it signifies to us that our products and services are up to a certain standard and recognized by them. In addition, they tend to give us more long-term projects to work on, which can also help us to build up our company’s brand name. Have you launched any products recently? We recently launched a new online website for Exmoo News over the weekend. Each day it updates more than 30 pieces of news online. This also provides us new opportunies to learn how to work with a relatively large team from Exmoo, and their marketing approach is different from other organizations we have worked with. Therefore, we needed to design their online website platform differently. Are you going to have any projects that involve WeChat? We provide solutions built on WeChat. Previously, we worked with BCM bank to launch a lucky draw campaign on WeChat. The WeChat platform is a bit similar to Facebook, for things such as setting up company’s official account. You can also do a lot of marketing on WeChat and Facebook. The popularity of WeChat is growing at a very fast pace. What are your plans for the future? We want to expand our network by working with large corporate clients for long-term business relationships. Also we would like to offer standardized package products and services or a one-stop service to our clients to diversify our products and service range. At the same time, this can make us become more efficient. For example, some clients only need a very simple website or just want to set up a business email account.
—
