Coconut Creek Company Thrives After Discovering It Was In Wrong Business

November 28, 2005

BY ROBYN A. FRIEDMAN
Special Correspondent

Two years after Will Fleming co-founded MotionPoint Corp., he made a startling discovery: He was in the wrong business. Prospective clients just weren't interested in the multi-language "virtual product brochures" the firm was selling. But they were interested in MotionPoint's ability to combine Web site technology and language.

So Fleming segued into a new line translating Web sites into other languages. And since then, the company's client base has been tripling every year.

"Yes, we were in the wrong business," said Fleming, the firm's president and chief executive officer. "But were we not in that business, there's no way we would have seen this opportunity or would have approached it with the same solution."

Originally founded in 2000, MotionPoint has been providing Web site translation services for large and midsized businesses for the last three years. The firm uses "TransMotion" technology, combining professional human translators with proprietary software that removes the complex, time-consuming and expensive IT work that is usually involved in the translation of Web sites.

MotionPoint's technology eliminates the need for a business to have two Web sites one in English and another in a second language, most commonly Spanish. "Many people want a Spanish language site, but don't want to build or manage a parallel site," Fleming said. Instead of needing a second site, businesses can now insert a link on their primary site that refers speakers of other languages to the Spanish (or alternative language) site. When changes are made to the English site, its counterpart is kept in sync, and text, graphics and links are automatically updated.

Fleming said a site can be fully enabled in another language within 90 days.

Law firm Gunster Yoakley & Stewart PA has been a client of MotionPoint for several years, said David G. Bates, a shareholder in the firm's West Palm Beach office. "We have a great number of Hispanic clients that are important to the firm, and we wanted to make sure they were receiving the same benefits from the Web site that our English-speaking clients were," Bates said. "We also wanted to market to the Spanish-speaking community."

The home page of the law firm's Web site now contains an "En Español" link for Spanish-speaking visitors. And the site, which took just three weeks to build, has led to inquiries from new clients, Bates said.

Although MotionPoint's greatest demand is for English-to-Spanish translations, Fleming said the firm has client sites in more than a dozen languages, including French and Chinese. The firm is working on an Arabic Web site.

While finding a product that customers would buy was his initial challenge in making MotionPoint successful, Fleming said that employee recruitment remains a challenge. "We're always on the lookout because we believe that getting the right talent into an organization is incredibly important," he said.

And while Fleming admits that he misjudged the market when he initially formed the company, he realizes that he wouldn't have found his niche without making that mistake. "Your greatest strength is usually related to your greatest weakness," he said. "It was certainly a great challenge being in the wrong business, but at the same time it was our greatest opportunity."