HotWax Media has extensive expertise and a unique focus on Apache OFBiz. You can see that throughout our web site, we are active in the OFBiz community, and we write about OFBiz regularly on this blog. But OFBiz is not all we do. I thought it was about time we gave some attention to the other things we do here at HotWax Media — let’s call them the non-OFBiz things. So, here we go. The only rule for today’s post: Whatever it is, it can’t include OFBiz.
We build amazing Flash microsites
Let’s begin with one of our most recent and most effective microsites: Black Diamond’s Fall 2010 Efficient Series Skis and Boots product launch microsite.
Working with the über-talented marketing/creative team at Black Diamond, we put together a highly effective microsite in support of Black Diamond’s Fall 2010 product line. Of course, the site features breathtaking imagery along with a whole bunch of the very latest in superb Black Diamond gear. There is also some thoughtful interaction design that becomes evident in the clean navigation, well-placed video, mouse-over product highlights, and 360-degree product spins from the good folks at 3DVO.
All things considered, this is the way you roll out a product line in style. The vehicle is useful, the information is rich, and the value is clear.
Over the past 3+ years, we have also built dozens of Flash microsites on behalf of Swarmbuilder / 3POINT5 — these include sites for Patagonia, GORE-TEX, Pearl Izumi, Leatherman, Thule, and literally dozens and dozens of other brands that you probably know and love. This intensive production work has given us great experience working directly with the marketing and creative teams at some world-class brands.
Some have strict style guides; in that case, we demonstrate our mastery of UI functionality and design by strictly adhering to those pre-established guidelines as we create new microsites. In other words, for these companies, we color inside the lines, and our technical design skills are fantastic. Other companies have less established branding guidelines; for those companies, we show creativity and leadership by creating strong, innovative designs that can inform future branding efforts. In either case, and in all those cases that are somewhere in between, the common theme is that we enjoy gaining the experience points that come from working with such a wide variety of very talented folks. Also, it makes us proud that we are working for some of the absolute coolest outdoor companies in the world.
We offer complete creative services
HotWax Media has been doing design for more than 12 years now. Along the way we have instituted a process to back up the creative skills that go into corporate ID, print collateral, and web UIs. We have done numerous logos, business cards, letterheads, envelopes, brochures, post cards, t-shirts, hats, and…the list goes on. We have great relationships with local and national printers and can handle jobs of any size. Here are just a few examples of our more recent pieces:
We build good-looking, affordable CMS web sites
Alas, not every company wants or needs enterprise e-commerce. Some companies simply want to use the web to present information about their company! It’s a quaint idea, but hey, we like it too. Simple content management systems, like Joomla! and a whole bunch of others, make it quick, easy, and inexpensive to create a professional web site with content management capability. Often times these sites are appropriate for companies that sell services as opposed to products. These companies want to be able to easily control and update the information about their offerings, but they do not want to sell their services directly over the web. For these companies, the most important ideas are high-quality visual presentation and ease of use. On both counts, HotWax Media delivers.
We’ll stop here for now. This post has highlighted some of HotWax Media’s strengths that live outside of OFBiz-proper, and I hope it has been interesting. With all of that said, OFBiz remains our main focus in a big, big way. The Flash, creative, traditional web development, and other skills we have cultivated as a company over the last dozen years contribute directly to our ability to deliver the best OFBiz e-commerce and ERP systems in the world today, and that won’t change. But hey — we have a 12-year history and a broad range of skills to show for it, and that is definitely worth acknowledging.