Flabell - Sunshine Website

We’ve been able to interview the folks behind the young and upcoming Website ‘Flabell’. And here is what they had to say about themselves and their project.
Let’s start with a few simple questions.

1. What is Flabell?

Hey Chris, thank you very much for having us! We believe Flabell is becoming the only place on the web where you can download high quality Flash Components, with no compromises. This means you will get the best support, the best design, the best code and the best files. More than that, we are a team of innovative UI developers here and each of our products is very well thought of and has a unique twist to make it beautiful. Yes, I said beautiful.

We believe the time for unexperienced freelancers to provide Flash Stock for the masses is over. It was about time for a company to put a halt to this and raise the bars. We decided our company Vuzum should be that company.

2. Tell me more about the people behind Flabell?

Our team is built out of six smart creatives from Europe. Why smart? When we built the team, we made sure every one of us has a BS in Computer Science. (even our rockstar designer!)
We didn’t accept any compromises because we are headed towards a very competitive field, and we wanted to prove that we bring true value compared to everyone else out there.

I am Andrei Potorac (CEO & Creative Director), and I co-founded Vuzum with my best friend Andrei Neamtu (COO & Senior Developer). Flabell is our first start-up.
Don’t take our job names seriously though, as we’re very involved as Flash Developers as well.

The rest of the team is built by the best guys we ever worked with: Ionut Cirja (Flash Developer), Dana Chichirita (our designer), Vlad Serban (Web Developer) and Raluca Sofian (Flash Developer).

3. What was the main motivation and idea to start the Website?

I had the idea for Flabell two years ago. I knew Flash Stock websites are headed where the App Store is headed now. Quantity will never outcome quality.

So the main motivation was to change the direction stock Flash Components are headed. We at Vuzum think that if we provide – at no charge – similar components with any of the components that sell very well on the other websites, we could open people’s eyes, and grow their expectations when it comes to Flash Stock. It doesn’t have to be the way it is! Buyers HAVE to get support for their purchases, they HAVE to get everything they expected from their purchase and more! Only on Flabell they can get that today, and I am not happy to say that.

There are so many cluttered flash stock websites out there, it is unbelievable how low the quality of Flash Components has gotten in the last two years, and this is only making the entire market worse. We wanted to change that! No, we WILL change that!

We realized a website focused on quality over quantity is missing, and this is the main reason we started Flabell. The products we upload on Flabell are everything a Vuzum client would expect of us.

On Flabell you can find new Flash Components every week. If you decide to purchase the product while it is featured, you get an important discount because you might end up not using it. You never know what kind of projects you will work on, so that was the idea for the discount. If you want to purchase it after the bell rings, you will still be able to do that from the archive at full price. It’s pretty fair for everyone.

We provide Gold Tickets and Silver Tickets, to reward any user that is purchasing more than once from Flabell. This way, with every new purchase, one user gets closer to a free product, and with every three consecutive purchased products, each user has a 50% discount on whatever they choose to buy.

We are also constantly releasing new Flash Components, which are free. Everything a user needs to do to get a free Flash Component is to sign up to Flabell, so he can track his downloads in his account. This way, every time we update a product, he’ll see it in his personal account, and he can download the latest files again.

Okay, you’ve now been up and running since 6th March 2009 and I read from a Blog that you have currently over 5’000 Users already registered on your platform. That’s around 300% growth per month/year (?).

1. How have you been able to manage this growth?

That’s correct, we had a 300% growth, but it hasn’t caused us any problems so far. Not sure if I mentioned this, but we are a team of smart guys.

We went over 6000 Active Users today. Our target is to reach 10.000 active users by the end of this year, but we now believe 20.000 users is achievable as well.

2. What have been the main problems to date and how have you dealt with them?

As every start-up realizes sooner or later, making your website known is as hard as building it.

That has been the main problem – to get our name out there. It’s not always easy to compete with well positioned websites, so this is what we’re working on right now.
We started an advertising campaign with TheFWA.com and more is planned for the end of the year, when our library will be more diverse.

We also launched a 1500 USD Giveaway Campaign, and we look forward to see how that goes.

So, things are looking really good for the moment with lots of positives!

1. How do you see the future for Flabell, and,

Flabell will continue to grow. We see how thrilled our users are, and that’s enough motivation for us to move forward. It is true there is a lot of work our team has ahead, but we’ve never been more dedicated to doing what we love. It’s a new internet!

2. Do you see any other interesting areas for further future development?

Definitely! We’re working on some great new features for Flabell, to go one step further in our support. We’ll offer free video tutorials for our users, to instruct them on how they can use our components, and give them examples while we’re at it.

Because of the modularity we use for every project we put up on Flabell, every file can be integrated in the same way. This is really helpful in the long run, even if it takes us more time to build it right from the start. Our users seem to love that as well!

Flabell is the first part of a larger project called Blogvio (“bring interactivity to blogs”), so we’re making sure we are doing it right, because this way we are preparing our library for the future.

I’d like to say a really big THANK YOU for your time. It’s really appreciated!

It’s been my pleasure! I have to get back to finishing our next product’s (the Video Player) interaction now, so will catch up with you when we reach our 10.000th user!

Flabell Rocks – www.flabell.com

What will be new:

Cut, Copy & Paste
Cut text and past it everywhere you want.

Landscape Keyboard
Better writing SMS

MMS
Like the iPhone 3G S you can use MMS

Spotlight Search
Find what you’re looking for across your iPhone, all from one place.

And even More:

• Voice Memos
• Improved Calendar
• Buy Movies, TV Shows, and Audiobooks
• Enhanced Stocks App
• Safari Improvements
• Internet Tethering
• Stereo Bluetooth
• Automatic Wi-Fi Login
• Sync Notes
• Parental Controls
• iTunes Store Account
• YouTube Login
• Shake to Shuffle

[cb type="company"]Apple[/cb]