You are now watching: Episode One

Robbin’s Wreaths

Michael Lamoureux and his wife Robbin are poised to be two of Vancouver Island’s most successful small business entrepreneurs.  They took over the business of Robin’s Wreaths back in 2007, and once they had changed the name they began immediately with a bold new business plan which included expansion into more western markets and an additional 15 staff.

In their first year of business they shipped about 160,000 pounds of wreaths and garnets.  This year, business has so far doubled and the Lamoureux family wreaths have made their way into Butchart Gardens, Thrifty Foods and multiple locations across Western Canada.  Success hasn’t gone to their heads, they’ve kept their roots humble and still make all the wreaths by hand.  Robbin and Michael are still planning to expand their business further including a program in which local schools sell their wreaths as a fundraising tool and the launch of a website they started in 2009 that would allow them to sell their products beyond their local market.

And then things went wrong.

Michael admits that he’s not a technical person.  That’s why he and Robbin initially hired a local freelance web designer to build a site for them. What they ended up with was not what they had in mind, so they parted ways and tried another route.  That road involved another company who, through a series of seminars, suggested that they could have all the websites they would ever need for a mere $6000.00.  Through the seminar, they were convinced that selling their products online would be simple, so they upgraded to another package that would help them even further – and cost them an extra $4000.00.

“We’re really choked.” Says Robbin “We don’t care. We don’t know what we’re doing. We don’t want to learn how to build it, we just want someone to do it for us.”

“We spent $10,000, and we’re sitting here with nothing.  We’re just… choked”

That’s when Richard Lawrence of  Hosting Nation and Andrew Smith of  Oceanside Web TV swept in with a solution.  They had recently decided to work together on a project where they would select five businesses over six months to receive a custom web package completely free.  The packages include a custom design from Annika Sibert of Fusion Creative, video footage and promotion from Oceanside Web TV, 3D design and animation from Niklas Andersson of Square Eyes Media and from Hosting Nation, a domain with web hosting, an e-commerce system, marketing and promotion and all the bells and whistles the team can muster.

The team at Extreme Website Makeover is planning for a launch of the new Robbin’s Wreaths site at the end of January, 2010.  Stay tuned to Extreme Website Makeover over the coming weeks for updates, new episodes and more content from the EWM team!