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Web site design company keeps business in the family
By MELANIE AVE © St. Petersburg Times, published December 3, 2000 HIGHWOODS PRESERVE -- The entrepreneurial dream began one Sunday morning when the father-son team of Darius and Ken Bakunas was jogging along Bayshore Boulevard in 1997. "I said, "Why don't we start a company,' " recalled the elder Bakunas, a 63-year-old retired Air Force colonel. "Ken said, "That's what I was thinking.' " Ken Bakunas, who was working as the Web master of IBM.net at the time, had been moonlighting as a Web designer. Other companies kept asking him to build an online presence for them. So later that year, Ken and his father started their own company from their respective homes. They wanted a dot-com name, but most of the good ones were taken, so they bought magnetic.com from a Brandon man who wasn't using it. They called the company Magnetic Corp. Ken, 32, handled the technical design side of the business, while Darius worked on the administrative and financial aspects of the venture. One year later, Ken quit his job and joined his father and wife, Jennifer, the company's Web services manager. They leased 1,100 square feet of office space on N Dale Mabry Highway. Now Magnetic Corp. and its five employees are moving to a 2,300-square-foot office at Highwoods Preserve on Bruce B. Downs Boulevard. The new office in the recently completed three-story Highwoods Plaza building fits the image and growth needs of the company, Darius Bakunas said. After doubling its income each year for the past three years, Magnetic Corp. is expected to double its revenues, customer base and employees over the next year. For the first time, the company has hired a marketing firm to get its name out to potential clients, small- to large-size companies. Until now, the growth of the company that develops and manages Web sites for businesses around the nation, has come with no outside advertising. "It's all been word of mouth," Darius Bakunas said. Clients such as BBJ Environmental Solutions and Tampa Bay Systems laud the quality of the sites designed by Magnetic, as well as the company's professionalism. Some of the sites come with streaming video, sound, animation and extensive databases. Magnetic also can design intranets for in-house company use, host sites on its own servers and keep track of the number of visitors to sites. Magnetic is in the process of developing a site for Sarasota-based LexJet Corp., named by Deloitte & Touche as the area's fastest growing technology company. "We picked these guys for a reason," said Ron Simkins, LexJet's chief executive officer. "They're highly proficient with the cutting edge of Web technology." Web site design starts at $5,000 and can cost more than $100,000, Ken Bakunas said, depending on the size and complexity. They range from the simple resume-type page to interactive sites with multimedia presentations. "I think we have the ability to make a site and make it make money," said the younger Bakunas, the company's president. "A lot of the sites have a million visitors a month." "And once they're there," Mrs. Bakunas added, "we know how to keep them there and how to get them to come back." Magnetic's expertise has come through training and years of experience, said company vice president Darius Bakunas. He said it's not something that can be learned in six months or a year by reading a book or following instructions on a CD-ROM. "We're small," he said, "but we can do everything a large company can do because of our technical ability." Another bonus, Bakunas said, is that Magnetic is a family business. "We know we can trust everyone," he said. "We have the same goal: make the company grow." - Melanie Ave can be reached at (813) 226-3473 or melanie@sptimes.com.
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