I have been planning on writing this post since the first day of 2012 and am only now getting round to it and we are almost 5% into the year! [Updated: I didn't complete this till the 19th January so we are now over 5% into the year!]

One year ago I was beginning my 15th year at Cadimage Group (formally Cadimage Solutions) and my 7th year as the Managing Director.

In general I spend more time thinking about the future than looking at the past, but I find it good as I plan for a New Year to review and reflect on the previous year.

Without going into a huge amount of detail as I look back on 2011 I would  say that like most years Cadimage Group has achieved a lot. A few highlights across our Group include:

GRAPHISOFT New Zealand

We started there year by reaffirming our commitment to Architectural Education in New Zealand by sponsoring the Victoria University FirstLight House. This was the first time a Southern Hemisphere team had been picked to compete in the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon. As keen observers we followed the progress both in New Zealand in preparation and then in the US as they were competing and we were stoked to see them take out third place.

In mid-year we released ArchiCAD 15 throughout New Zealand. This was the first time I had visited Christchurch since the disastrous earthquakes and I was a little nervous. Overall I was impressed with the resilience being shown by our Christchurch based customers and there approach to simply getting on with the job at hand.

The end of the year saw the fourth year of the NZIA Graphisoft Student Design Awards which saw 60 Architecture Students receive prize money totaling $60,000 and Software to the value of $30,000.

Cadimage

2011 started with us securing the distribution for Solibri Model Checking Software in New Zealand and Australia. Taking on a new product is a major undertaking and we were pleased to complete the year with a  handful of sales and a strong position for 2012.

In March we launched a couple of new websites which marked the completion of the Strategic Branding work we had done with Brian Richards and his team.

Mid-year in conjunction with the ArchiCAD 15 release we released the updates to all our Tools. This is the sixth successive version where we have launched our Tools on the same day as the ArchiCAD International release. June was a record month for our export sales in conjunction with the ArchiCAD 15 Upgrade but this was short-lived with July trumping June by a further 15% increase.

Later in the year we expanded our website to include additional ArchiCAD software from different suppliers and relaunched ArchiCAD Objects.

Overall we have continued to grow our international business during a tough world economic climate. While growth is not at the level we would hope for progress is being made!

Cadconsult & Cadconsult PLM

In October the biggest event of the year took place with the merger of Cadconsult into the Cadimage Group and the formation of Cadconsult PLM.

Andrew Ecker the founder of Cadconsult has been involved with ArchiCAD as our South Island Reseller for 20 years and has also been selling and supporting Solid Edge Mechanical Engineering software since 1997. We merged the South Island ArchiCAD business in to GRAPHISOFT New Zealand and created Cadconsult PLM to focus on the Sales, Service and Training of Solid Edge and a number of other Siemens PLM Velocity Products.

As with all mergers there have been challenges and teething issues but 3 months in the entire team is excited about this achievement and the platform it has created for 2012.

Cadimage Team

As a result of the merger and growth we were pleased to see our team expand by 3 full-time and 2 part-time people. The New Zealand economy has had a bumpy recovery and still has a long way to go but I do enjoy being able to grow and expand our team.

Personal

On the personal side there were a few achievements as well. In April I took [almost] a month off. The reasons behind this were two-fold. One, it was time to have a break and, Two, it was a chance for others within the company  to take the lead. While in hindsight the timing was not necessarily the best the team stepped up and as mentioned above we achieved a successful launch of ArchiCAD 15 and our Tools.

Running

In 2010 I ran 15 times for a total distance of 105km – the main catalyst was being stuck in Hungary as the Icelandic Volcano did it’s thing. As a result of this lack of exercise (and a couple of other factors) the pounds went on. 2011 started and I wasn’t overly impressed with my weight so I started running. For the first time in a long time I ran without a goal or an event in mind. Over the year I lost almost 10% of my weight and for the first time since I have been tracking it I ran every month of the year. As I was not training for an event I gave myself little goals. The one I am most proud of was the goal of running ten, 10km runs in May. Over the course of the month I managed to achieve 13 runs and took a total of 5 mins off my time.

By the end of the year I had clocked up 82 runs for a total of 753km.

Sports

2011 saw the Rugby World Cup come to town and I was finally able (after two previous attendances) to see the All Blacks lift the trophy (just.) Having watched France knock out the All Blacks at my two previous World Cups I was almost banned from attending the pool match where the All Blacks made up for Cardiff. In the end I managed to watch 11 of the 20 teams play live and ended up watching the French 3 times!

2011 closed with me attending the Boxing Day Cricket Test at the MCG. While India didn’t live up to their quality on paper the MCG test has proved to be the closest in the series so far. The MCG is an incredible ground and attending a test match with 70,000 people on the first day and a total of 190,000 over the 4 days was something quite unreal.

Travel

2011 saw me make two European trips. One for the Graphisoft International Partners conference in Berlin and later a trip through Sweden, Germany, Czech Republic, Hungary and the UK where I finished up attending the ArchiCAD Summer School held in Liverpool.

Overall I was away from home for 56 days which is a reasonably significant amount of time and in 2012 am looking to stay closer to home and allow other members of the team the opportunity to attend these events.

2012

As our business continues to change we continue to look forward and plan ahead. 2012 is shaping up to be challenging for us with potential European recessions on the back of the Euro issues and with ongoing quakes in Christchurch the rebuild is further delayed. However, we have a number of exciting initiatives planned and with a bigger team we are all excited about the year ahead.

Previous Posts:

2010 – A year in review

2009

Today I got an email pointing out that I didn’t post a single article in October or November!

The last date I posted was actually the 27th September when I talked about how impressed I was with Air New Zealand getting me (eventually) down to Christchurch.

The reason I mention this again is that what took place on the 27th September is largely responsible for my lack of posts in the last two months.

On 27th September 2011, Tracey and I (as directors of Cadimage Group) along with Andrew and Marion Ecker of Cadconsult signed an agreement that saw our businesses merge on 1st October 2011.

Andrew Ecker has essentially been part of the team since 1991 when we first started distributing ArchiCAD. Andrew operated as our South Island ArchiCAD reseller for 20 years. In 1999 Andrew established Cadconsult Limited as a great kiwi owner-operator business. Andrew has had enormous success with ArchiCAD in the South Island. Cadconsult was also the New Zealand distributor for Solid Edge – a mechanical design product from Siemens PLM.

As Cadimage Group has developed the board decided to approach Andrew about merging our businesses. We saw that as essentially a solo operator Andrew was having to deal with significant administration which was preventing him from doing what he loves best – interacting with customers and potential customers.

Over a four month period we discussed options with Andrew and initially signed a Heads of Agreement in mid-August working towards the official merger from 1st October 2011. The merger saw Cadimage Group acquire Cadconsult and in return Andrew received a shareholding in Cadimage Group.

Over the last two months I have put in considerable work merging our businesses which also included establishing a new business to continue the Solid Edge related operations – Cadconsult PLM.

While we have extensive systems and processes in our business, merging customer databases with over 20 years of history still takes time. Also getting systems in place helps provide a platform for us to build and grow Cadconsult PLM as a key part of the Cadimage Group has taken time, with yesterday seeing the third iteration of our website launched in 2 months! This coming week sees Cadconsult PLM’s first official events with the launch of Solid Edge ST4 in Christchurch and Auckland.

Two months in we are still excited about the opportunities the merger will give us and are looking forward to a strong 2012.

Along with the merger – though not directly as a result of it – we have also recently employed two more people taking our team to 17. It is great to be growing even after another challenging year. For an overview of the Cadimage Group you can refer to our website.

In October 2003, Murray Pearson and I- as the then directors of Cadimage Solutions – divested our Architectural Visualisation business and along with Gareth Ross established Buildmedia Limited.

For the initial 15 months I was involved as a director until Cadimage Solutions sold it’s majority stake to Murray. At that time I became Managing Director of Cadimage and my focus was on both ArchiCAD and our Cadimage Tools. Ironically when I was first employed by Murray in 1997, it was to re-establish the visualisation part of Cadimage that had been in gradual decline as the popularity of ArchiCAD increased.

Cadimage, Buildmedia, Murray, Gareth and myself have remained in close contact since 2003 – we shared offices until 2007 – and as of a few days ago I am now once again a director of Buildmedia. My involvement has come at a time where Buildmedia is ready for a new phase of growth with Murray having sold his shareholding to Gareth, giving Gareth the opportunity to stamp his mark on the company.

Buildmedia do some amazing work across Architecture, Product and Visual Simulations and I am excited to be involved again.

Credits:

Images: 1, 5-7 St Heliers Development by Cook Sargisson & Pirie Architects

Images: 2-4 Matiatia Marina Visual simulations

Image 8: St Michel bathroom furniture

Image 9: Marley guttering

Image 10: Wiaroa Canal development

Image 11: St Michel bathroom furniture

Image 12: Nulook architectural detail

All images copyright Buildmedia 2011

This time a year ago I was feeling very optimistic about 2010. After we reached a real low point in September 2009 we saw the market improve and literally within 3 months things were heading in the right direction again. My own optimism was shared by the building industry and we saw 2010 get off to a great start with January, February and March all showing steady improvement. Then in April the wheels started to fall off again!

While this may make it sound as though 2010 was a bad year i have to be honest and say while it didn’t turn out as expected I am generally happy with the results from another challenging year in business.

Anyone who knows me, knows I like to get things done so it is always interesting to review what was achieved to help provide a baseline for setting realistic goals for a New Year.

Without wanting to bore you completely below are some highlights (and low lights) for 2010:

Graphisoft New Zealand

As outlined above the NZ Building Industry picked up for Oct 09 – Mar 10 but then dropped away again. Building Consents hit a major low in October and while signs are pointing in the right direction consent continue to be at low levels.

This indicator translated to low sales for Graphisoft New Zealand, however, with our eyes on the future we have sustained our staffing levels and look forward to an improvement in 2011.

From a marketing perspective we take a medium to long term view and invest heavily in eduction (see below). Marketing needs a continual focus especially during a down turn in the market and we have continued to invest heavily in this regard.

ArchiCAD 14 was released in June and took inter-disciplinary BIM Collaboration to a new level. This in conjunction with the GRAPHISOFT BIM Server released with ArchiCAD 13 provide extremely effective communication of information rich building models.

Cadimage

Cadimage had a big year and again managed to grow sales year-on-year. While growth was single digit it is still a remarkable achievement all things considered. More pleasing was to see that total sales in the last three years are triple what they were in the first three years of this business.

We pushed through $1 million USD in export sales during the year and also launched our new branding.

The branding has been well received though we still have a long way to go with it. Working with BRR at the strategic level has proved interesting and enjoyable.

New Zealand Trade and Enterprise have continued to support our global marketing efforts and we entered the fourth year of our Market Development Grant. Funds were used for strategic branding, translation and market visits.

Travel

2010 was a reasonably light year for travel for me though I did fly around the world twice and visited 9 countries.

In April the GRAPHISOFT IPC was held in Budapest and was all good until a certain volcano impacted our return trip – this added 3 additional countries to those I had planned to visit.

Septembers trip was less eventful from a interruption perspective but I crammed a lot into 12 days visiting San Francisco, Houston, Nottingham, London, Budapest and Oslo.

Education

As outlined above GSNZ continued investing in education with 2010 marking the third year of our involvement in the NZIA Graphisoft Student Design Awards – this time visiting Wellington.

We were also stoked to see ArchiCAD has been used extensively in the design of the FirstLight House which has won a place in the Solar Decathlon. This is a remarkable achievement and we are proud to be a sponsor as the team prepares to take their house to Washington DC to compete.

Cadimage Group

From an overall perspective our continued strategy of building both an NZ focused business and a global business in parallel is proving a solid strategy. Our continues global growth has helped balance the downturn in NZ at just the right time – we await the time where things align perfectly so we can explore some new growth opportunities.

I have enjoyed the step we took with creating a ‘proper’ board of directors and appointing Lance Wiggs as a director. The regular meetings have been both productive and stimulating and provided a real focus for working on the business. Our final meeting for 2010 saw the presentation of our strategic plan and budget for 2011 which is something I am very excited about.

2011

January 2011 marks six years for me as Managing Director of the Cadimage Group. The last six years have flown by and the business has changed remarkably in that time. There have been highs and lows and I believe I have learnt a lot from both the positives and the negatives.

2011 also marks a new era in Cadimage with some high level changes to [hopefully] take the pressure off me and also provide opportunities for other key staff to step up. While I remain ultimately responsible for the delivery and development of our strategy I believe my team will take big steps and the business will improve immeasurably as a result.

While I still will be full time for Cadimage I am on the lookout for opportunities both to grow Cadimage, but also opportunities for me to offer my expertise to other start-ups and businesses.

There are many more exciting changes in store for 2011 which we will share with you as we go. I think the review above shows we can achieve a lot in a year so I expect 2011 to be no different.

I am currently travelling with the support of New Zealand Trade and Enterprise around the US, UK and Europe.

Working on building  a global business is a challenge but with support from partners like NZTE it is nice to have financial support which means we can focus on other equally important issues.

We are constantly working on building our international brand – Cadimage – and for those interested I have also been posting on the Cadimage Blog

Round the World : Part 1 USA

Round the World : Part 2 UK

While we were busy getting our new website together we also passed another significant milestone with Cadimage.

$1,000,000 USD in Online Export Sales.

While this milestone has taken longer than we would have hoped the graph below shows that sales are growing at an increase rate.

You can also see (as would be expected) that sales jump everytime there is an ArchiCAD Upgrade.

Note: The graph above shows till the end of 2010 hence the flattening off!

My team and I are extremely proud of this achievement and it is especially rewarding knowing the revenue is 100% export based which complements our existing New Zealand business well.

It’s a while since I did a 80+ hour week but this last 7 days once again cracked that number (and yes that means I worked most of Queens Birthday Weekend.)

Over the last week we have put the finishing touches to our new brand and website.

It has been a long project with the inevitable last minute rush but we hit our target date and we can now all breathe a sign of relief!

The new website is only the beginning and we have a whole host of projects we will be working on through-out the rest of the year.