20 years ago, CEO Michelle Selnick purchased our first domain and signed the lease to our very first office.
Since then, she’s built an enduring, dynamic company that lives up to its mission: achieving online success for our customers.
In honor of our birthday, we here at webFEAT Complete wanted to use this week’s blog post to look back on the last two decades to get a clear picture of how much we’ve grown. We’re celebrating our company values, how far we’ve come, and the hardworking people who got us here.
Flashback to the late 90’s. Everyone was buying Beanie Babies and you couldn’t turn on the radio without hearing the Backstreet Boys. Meanwhile, Michelle Selnick was working for a start-up selling print materials. More and more, she noticed her customer base was waning, and there was one specific thing to blame: The Internet. She decided that if her customers were going to the web, then so would she.
It seems like every good business origin story has a “leap of faith” moment, and this was ours. At the time, no one knew if the internet was going to last, and in the very beginning, webFEAT Complete had very little to show for itself. Despite this, wFC’s first website was a huge e-commerce site, proving that we haven’t shied away from challenges since day one.
As the company evolved, so did our values. One of our favorites is to “value each other,” and one of the ways we measure our growth is by the people we’ve added to our team. A turning point for webFEAT Complete was the addition of Jeremy Maurer, our COO and Network Engineer. Jeremy has been with wfC for 11 years, after Michelle hired him on the spot in his first interview with her. Jeremy had a background in desktop support and LAN work, and upon coming to wFC, he took us from a humble, 6-server setup to now managing over 30 servers. He also pioneered our ability to deliver cost effective, framework-driven sites to our clients. The solidity and steady growth of our company’s infrastructure over the last decade can be attributed to Jeremy’s mindful and analytical perspective.
When asked what our company values meant to him, Jeremy emphasized his love for wFC’s proactive philosophy. To him, being proactive translates to providing our clients with top-tier customer service and the latest in digital innovation. At webFEAT Complete, we’re all about acting in service of our customers and nurturing those relationships, because ultimately, what’s best for our clients is what’s best for us.
No one understands and delivers on this better than our Production Manager, Hanna Roberts-Williams. Hanna joined the wFC crew in 2017. Her background is a holistic blend of customer service, marketing, content writing, and poetics, all of which make her an excellent fit to employ the creative strategy required to oversee our Production department. Hired on as a writer in our SEO department, she worked to develop webFEAT Complete’s content creation program. Now, in her role as Production Manager, her full-time focus is on what we need to provide our clients to get them to where they need to go. She describes this as the best of both worlds, where creative meets administrative. Her warmth and talent inspire the entire wFC team to collaborate and strive for excellence.
Another leader within our production department is our invaluable Systems Administrator, Cory Selnick. Cory quite literally grew through the ranks of webFEAT Complete–he started cleaning the office at night in high school. After receiving a full ride to Ohio University, Cory went into online sales in the medical industry before becoming Jeremy’s right-hand man here at webFEAT Complete, and going on to creating a position all his own. Cory has done incredible work with our WP3 program, and is responsible for our client-minded maintenance and security. He’s committed to providing our clients with top-of-the-line products in terms of security and productivity solutions. In addition to problem solving for our clients, Cory is our in-house go-to guy. He always keeps us laughing and having fun.
As the digital environment grew and evolved, so did the programs and services that webFEAT Complete now offers to our clients. Search Engine Optimization has become massively important in such a short amount of time, and our SEO manager Ray Cheselka keeps works tirelessly to stay ahead of the curve, so we can offer the latest in SEO strategy to our clients. After meeting Michelle in a class at the University of Cincinnati, Ray joined the wFC team immediately after graduating in 2014. SEO is all about visibility, and Ray finds the job of making sure our client’s websites can be found an incredibly rewarding endeavor. SEO efforts directly correlate with client success, and our SEO team has been able to provide tangible results to our clients thanks to Ray’s leadership and resourcefulness. Did we mention that he does it all from a different time zone? Ray’s commitment to collaboration with his teammates persisted even after he moved to Chicago, and he goes the extra mile to make sure he’s always available to help our clients.
The webFEAT story is one of endurance. So many things in the digital world are temporary, but not us. We’ve spent 20 years innovating, growing, and adapting to an ever-changing industry. Our secret? The unwavering vision and support from our leadership team, the meaningful results we’re able to deliver to our clients, and yes, our tried and true company values. Cheers to 20 years—and beyond!
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