How Lingo24 came to be – an e-commerce success story
by Christian Arno, 10th April, 2006
How Lingo24 came to be – an e-commerce success story As the dotcom boom was reaching fever pitch in 2000, a young languages student from Aberdeen in Scotland hatched a plan to win his own slice of the net revolution pie. He'd noticed that there didn't seem to be any translation companies who were seriously addressing the opportunities thrown up by the Internet, and he'd also spotted a glaring hole in both his, and his peers', pockets. They needed beer money!
Reasoning that a student-run translation service would be a low risk way to get into the translation industry and earn some extra pennies, Christian Arno commandeered the services of a fellow student to create a website selling his own, and his multi-lingual fellow students', translation services.
"Our first site was a lovely combination of amber and claret," reveals Arno, "and was very basic. This said, it did the trick - within weeks of launch, we'd attracted a small number of customers from all over the world."
Over the months that followed, Arno juggled a French language course in Lausanne with dealing with customers and translators before returning to the University of Oxford to complete his degree. Arno's studies didn't leave much time for entrepreneurialism, so the translation project (called tgv24.com at that time) was placed firmly on the backburner. Uninspired by the 'milk round' of banks and management consultancies that attempt to woo Oxbridge graduates every year, however, Arno decided that developing his nascent translation company would be the most exciting career option upon graduation.
In its early days, Lingo24 (a new name chosen to reflect a new, more professional approach to translation) was an experiment. Arno knew nothing of marketing, nor finance, and was not in a position to raise funds to grow his company quickly. The first Lingo24 website (http://www.lingo24.com) was not even launched until March, 2002. From this date onwards, however, the business has been on a steady upward curve.
"We've been incredibly lucky," continues Arno, "The business has grown and grown, and it's now safe to say the model works."
"What model is that?" you may ask. Well, Lingo24 started off in the same way as many companies, with its early employees working from home. The difference is that Lingo24 has maintained that model even though it now employs 45 people worldwide.
"We've constantly challenged the home-working model and tried to work out whether using offices might help us serve our clients better," says Arno, "but we've found that this way of working gives our employees a better quality of life, keeps our costs down, and makes us more flexible as a business."
It has also forced Lingo24 to invest in sophisticated web-based management systems, which have offered the company another benefit.
"Unlike most translation companies, we have a strong technology team in-house, which means we can integrate with our clients' content management systems, support whichever document formats they use, and generally adapt to their own technological infrastructure."
Lingo24 is now a leading translation service provider with an enviable client list across many sectors. From the humble beginnings of Arno's bedroom in his parents' Aberdeen house, the company has experienced rapid growth. Lingo24 now has operations in six different countries and is forecast to turnover £2million this financial year. It just goes to show what can be achieved with a good dotcom business idea, hard work, and a lot of luck!
© Lingo24
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