By Susan Holly

The transition from sign-maker to dot-comer was natural for

Rob Munz because, he says, “what is a Web site but a sign on the Internet.”

After running his sign company, Graphic Accents, in Naples for seven years,

Munz caught the Internet bug.

At the time, the Web was beginning to change from a strictly

marketing vehicle — the sign on the Internet — to an interactive business tool.

Munz started thinking of ways to use that power and found his best idea staring

him in the face at his sign company: online proofing.

Designers, he explains, spend as much as a third of their

time in the approval process. Generally, designs at various stages are run

across town, shipped overnight, or faxed to clients for review. Then they go

back and forth with changes until it is approved. The process was as true of

Munz’s sign business as for printing companies, graphic design firms, ad

agencies, apparel designers, label makers — any business that involves design. Why

not figure out a way to do it online, Munz reasoned, saving plenty of time and

money. It was the beginning of the idea behind Proof-it-Online.com, started in

July 1999.

“He’s the type who always has new ideas,” says his wife and

partner, Mary Beth, who at the time was on the marketing team for WCI. “But

this one I knew immediately was really good. I got all excited about it” — so

excited that she soon left WCI to join Proof-it-Online as marketing director.

Munz, meanwhile, took his idea to investors, who agreed to

help get the venture up and running.

Naples Management Investment Company provided seed money. It

took about $250,000 to get started, says the Naples native, who is now looking

for $3 million more to accelerate Proof-it-Online’s growth. The first of its

type to the market, Proof-it-Online now wants to become the de facto standard

for proofing online, explains Munz.

“This is a client-demanded solution for clients who are

tired of driving over to your office, waiting for FedEx, or working off a crummy

fax to proof a design,” explains Munz.

After selling the idea to his wife and investors, the next

step was to present the concept to the market “to see whether we just thought

it was a good idea or it really was a good idea,” says Munz. “The real test was

what does the market say about it.”

In October 1999 Munz and his small crew went to Graph Expo,

a large trade show for the printing and graphic design industry held in

Chicago. They launched the site there and, says Munz, they were totally

overwhelmed by the response. While they had expected interest from graphic

design firms, they were surprised when companies such as State Farm Insurance

saw ways to use the site for its newsletter, which it sends to all its agents

across the country. Also designers of clothing labels, decals, the tabs in

potted plants, keypads for phones and microwave ovens — the application seemed

pretty widespread.

“We came back from the show pumped up,” recalls Munz. “We

received market confirmation outside of our wildest dreams.” Based on what they

learned in Chicago, they tweaked the site, then attended graphics trade shows

in Atlanta, Miami, Boston, Los Angeles, and San Francisco to continue selling

the concept.

This past October, the company returned for its second Graph

Expo and was one of only 17 exhibits out of 480-plus that was named a must-see

by the show’s organizers.

Munz designed the site’s front end himself, then turned to

programmers to make the back end work. The overriding consideration is ease of

use, explains Munz, who likes to say, “Learn it at the top of the hour. Use it

on the quarter-hour.” Proof-it-Online’s customers are printers and designers,

but the site was developed from the perspective of the customer’s customers.

Thus, it is exceedingly easy to use and requires no special viewing software,

no plug-ins. “If someone has to download special viewing software, they are not

going to use it,” says Munz. All the customer needs to get started is a link to

the site.

>From that link, the customer can view the design, make

comments, actually make notations directly on the image, and send it back for

changes. Automatic e-mail notifies both client and designer when an image has

been posted or returned. The system also tracks the history of changes made

during the approval process. The service is available for $24.95 per month.

That provides customers with 12 job “buckets” into which they can continually

place and remove designs. The customer’s customer then accesses the design from

the bucket on Proof-it-Online.com, reviews it, and resubmits it with comments.

Heavier users may request additional buckets for a slightly higher monthly fee.

Some of Proof-it-Online’s customers use the service 10 to 20 times a day.

Proof-it-Online hosts its own Web site from its offices on

Trade Center Lane in Naples, where the six-person company has operated since

July (prior to that, it was a home-based business). The system runs on Windows

NT and uses Netscape Enterprise Web Server. The company is considering

co-locating the site with a Web-hosting service such as Digital Nation, Exodus,

or AT&T, so it can better guarantee uptime for its customers. Right now, it

is dependent on Sprint’s one main line into Southwest Florida, which can

sometimes go down. “We need higher line speeds. We need redundancy,” says Munz.

Proof-it-Online has about 1,300 users, both paid and on

30-day free trial periods. One of Munz’s biggest challenges is making sure the

company is focused on what best serves the customer. “We have two audiences —

our members and their clients. We are invisible to their clients, but they have

to be pleased for our members to be pleased,” says Munz.

Other companies are offering similar services, and Munz

realizes he will have to work hard to stay ahead of the competition. “We are

totally driven by clients. We know if we don’t do it there is somebody right

behind us.”

Proof-it-Online’s customers so far have been largely from

the paper printing industry, but last month Munz and his staff attended a trade

show of the screen-printing apparel industry to break into that market.

The future looks promising, and he is optimistic the company

will receive the capital it needs to expand. Right now it has one sure thing

going for it, notes Munz: “We are a company on the Web actually generating

revenues. What an anomaly.”

Susan Holly is a freelance writer based on Sanibel.