May 30, 2008

A Geek Dinner with Moo

Continuing in the spirit of London Web Week the lovely people from Moo were the special guests at a Geek Dinner last night. In a pub in High Holborn about 40 geeks and hackers converged for the event. There were lots of people from Moo in attendance which gave everyone the chance to meet many of the people they'd seen speak at conferences like Richard Moross, Richard Pope and Denise Wilton.

Rather than a formal talk Richard M gave an impromptu history of the company from it's inception as the dubiously named "Pleasure Cards" to the Moo of today. They discussed some of the reasons for their success. Richard said that customer service was key. Being very accommodating early on created a really loyal following. They found that owning up to the mistakes they made and dealing with them created the happiest customers of all. Creating an honest dialogue is clearly important to the company.

When asked about market Richard talked about his time in the advertising industry. He lamented about some of the best creative minds trying to market bad products. Rather than wasting energy on marketing a bad product he'd rather put that energy into making a better product to start with. Moo have found that a lot of their marketing is just word of mouth because people are happy with the product. Denise really agreed with this, and describe the feeling of delight they want people to have opening a new delivery of Moo cards. She also added that partnerships like the one they have with Flickr have really helped to encourage people to participate with their own photos.

Moo is obviously a company that deeply cares about their products and customers. It was great to hear some of their experiences, their successes and the lessons they learned. Finally, I'm excited by the amount of great stuff happening in London Web Week with so many amazing people speaking and attending these events.

Tom Hughes-Croucher
Yahoo! Developer Network

Posted at May 30, 2008 2:53 PM

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