Interview with Founder Noel Stephens
What led you to set up bethefrontpage.com?
There’s a whole pile of things including being prompted by my Aunt T’s (for Theresa) 100th birthday. But there are other threads in there too; one was the wedding of a friend in Freiburg where the friends got together to produce a play about the couple and a tradition of wedding newspapers in Germany. Since that experience I’ve always been struck when reflecting why the Germans do it and we don’t in the UK. That wedding tradition of the friends and family of the couple creating a wedding newspaper filled with pictures, articles and stories seemed to be a great way to commemorate the whole story around the couple and their wedding.
Also, a good friend in Poland had produced a similar wedding newspaper and I felt it would work well as a quality gift, targeting milestone life events. But I guess the real trigger was and thanks to, Aunt T.
Where did the name bethefrontpage.com come from and why was it chosen as the name for the business?
After having the idea I had to come up with a name that reflected the principles behind the newspaper. For me the newspaper was always going to be about recognition and acknowledgement so the name had to reflect that purpose. The actual name came about after an evening spent with my friend Clayton coming up with ideas for names. I had felt that ‘Front Page’ reflected what I was trying to do but that name was taken, so it was abandoned early on. After many frustrating hours, I came up with ‘be the front page’ which captured the core principle – acknowledgement and recognition and for the first time that day, Clayton said – “I like it!”
What was the original idea behind the website?
With recognition and acknowledgement of people’s most important moments at its heart, quality (and ideally beauty) had to be at the core of the product. The website needed to reflect that.
The image that I had for the website was that I wanted visitors to our site to feel like a customer walking into Liberty. Liberty always has great, high quality products but those products always feel accessible without the stuffiness that can accompany high end shops. Additionally the shop is a lovely place to explore.
Like Liberty, I wanted the site to be a pleasure to visit so we have tried to make even the task of writing personalised articles simple. We hope our customers find it fun and fast to create their personalised newspaper.
Because our focus is people’s milestone events, I wanted our website to communicate that a lot of time and thought had gone into its design and layout. So we’ve spent a lot of time on even small things such as all the little authentic touches and markings one would find in a ‘real’ newspaper.
How did you go about setting up the website, there must have been some considerable development needed to get the technical aspects of the site working, what were your priorities?
Don’t ask! So it’s a journey lots of people have been on and I’m sure I’m not the first to suffer the pain of the journey of ‘the technological adventure.’
Despite having a technology background I didn’t feel I was up to building the website as I hadn’t touched technology for ten years. So my first thought was to hire somebody.
My attempts at outsourcing the build involved one whose work was unstable and far too “change unfriendly” to allow us to add more functionality. That would’ve been a disaster.
I then turned to a small software house who again seemed focused on trying to get me to agree to have it constructed the way they wanted it built rather than the way I wanted. Their approach would have been easy for them but would have made it very difficult to change and, given that we knew it would be an evolving platform, we knew it needed to be changeable.
After another couple of failed attempts at outsourcing, I was forced to revive 10 – 15 year old technology skills and build it ourselves. It’s been done in a way that we know is adaptable and is built on widely used technology customised to the way we wanted it.
The technology will keep evolving and keep improving. The big focus for us is security and adding new features and whilst I’m not expecting to keep doing it, I will probably keep my hand in until I find someone able to take it on. I’m lucky in that I get advice from 2 senior technologists, one at The Guardian, and the other at The Times, who happen to be good personal friends. So I think they will help to make sure that we are always doing the right things.
Launching a product and getting a new brand to become well-known is a difficult business. What are your dreams for the bethefrontpage?
There’s a core feeling behind bethefrontpage, that there are four or five really significant events that happen to everybody; graduation, wedding, new job, that moment when you suddenly realise you’re 40 or 60.
At every one of those moments, we all take pictures but what I like about the bethefrontpage gift newspaper is that along with the picture, the story of the day and how you got to that day are captured.
So in terms of what I hope our brand will become? What I’d like to see is for personalised gift newspapers to become a normal way for each of us to record and keep our own memories for those four or five key events.
I feel that if your life means anything it just has to be worth more than your pics lying in facebook’s archives, and whilst the world is going digital I feel that gift newspapers have the potential to make people feel important and good about themselves. Imagine a newspaper front page to capture all those moments for you.
What advice would you have for someone who is interested in starting their own business?
I think the world is moving to an environment where we will all be running quasi businesses. So I would encourage anybody with the desire to have a go; and to adopt a very un-British mindset and be happy to try and maybe to fail, to try and fail again, and to keep going until in the end they’ll be successful. The ability to add value to people’s lives is so fulfilling and to get up every day knowing that you are going to make someone’s life better because of something you created from your mind or your hands is pretty fulfilling.
What have you learnt through the process?
Irrespective of size I’ve learnt that it takes a lot of time, physical energy, emotional strength, commitment and effort to set up a business. If one has got the desire to do it, it’s worthwhile. I’ve discovered that it’s much harder to do it than I’d expected but I’ve also surprised myself at my persistence and ability to keep going. I’ve realised just how emotional and passionate I am about the product; watching people’s reactions of sheer joy at seeing themselves in the newspaper and especially seeing those who weren’t convinced initially come around and become engaged once they have seen themselves in it, is just great. There are endless new ideas for the product waiting to be added to it.
It’s been indescribably hard but inspiring and fun work; and like almost every day, tomorrow there’ll be a new idea!
