Q: Oxiem was founded in 2004. How did the brand start?
Fimiani: It was established in Springfield, and Bill and I had worked together at a company called Rittal. I worked on the marketing side, (Sterzenbach) worked on the interactive side. And when we left the company, we felt like there was a need to create a marketing organization in the region that was focused on both branding and interactive, and so we created Oxiem. We wanted to come up with a more substantial marketing standpoint and with a more interactive spirit and capability of really becoming a dominant force in how people market.
Q: How many people does Oxiem employ in Springfield and across the entire company?
Fimiani: Twenty-two total, and about 8 people who are part-time … the two main offices are Springfield and Dublin, and we have an office we opened in July in Cleveland and we have a sales office in Dayton.
What’s unique is most people wouldn’t think of Springfield as a place where a strong interactive place would be, but we’ve been able to build a network with other offices that are around the region, so for us its been a great launch pad for the business.
Q: Talk about the Interactive Agency of the Year award. Is this the first time Oxiem has won this award?
Sterzenbach: It's the first time we've won that particular award. As far as the overall agency award, we've won different awards for design and interactive projects.
Fimiani: The (awards) event itself had a couple hundred of our peers there that are all in the interactive space. The award was also determined by a set of outside judges who look at the body of work done by interactive shops participating from all around the state … It's significant in that it's a peer review by state wide reps in the interactive community.
Q: What is unique about the Springfield office?
Fimiani: The Springfield office has half the team and the Dublin office has the other half. This office works on interactive search and branding; the other office has a little more design resource. We serve not just local clients, but work all over the country. We're one office with two locations. It's really interesting because we have a mesh network of staff, no one does one thing. We try to attract the talent to Oxiem where they're located. We try to be flexible so we can bring in the talent.
Q: How did the economic downturn affect your business?
Fimiani: One thing that's interesting about our business is the downturn in the economy has tended to benefit a company like ours. They just recognize that doing it online, it becomes a very efficient and effective and accountable path to winning customers. It's changing, and I think having a good sense on how what we do changes over time is very important to providing the capabilities that help companies to succeed.
Q: What are some of the struggles of having a small business here?
Sterzenbach: Springfield does have a smaller talent pool, it's a smaller market, that's always a struggle in general. And not being known as a tech hub in the U.S., it's hard to attract strong interactive talent.
Q: What are some of the advantages?
Fimiani:We've had an incredibly supportive business community, and clients in town (such as Konecranes, Turner Foundation, Security National Bank and more) … have been excellent, so to some degree it's big fish in a small pond and it has given us a foundation … People want you to succeed, and we get more care and attention here than if you were in a big city somewhere.
Q: Does Oxiem have any expansions or hiring coming up? What’s the next step?
Fimiani: We're definitely hiring as we continue to grow the business. If we didn't open another office, we would grow our business double digits year after year. We're looking at other cities to build another office or maybe two, so i think that's definitely in the cards.
Sterzenbach: Each office we do it a little better. It doesn't get easier because with each office we've developed our standards gone up, so it's just as hard each time, but it gets better.
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