Just how a small consultancy in Perth ends up providing marketing advice to Microsoft in Seattle is difficult to explain.
It’s one of those quirks of the modern world that allows an entrepreneur to set up on St Georges Terrace and service the globe.
Kevin Hewitt’s view is that he was not prepared to let distance get in the way when he established marketing consultancy Capitalis as a one-man business five years ago.
“You could not make geography an issue,” Mr Hewitt said.
“If someone wants to meet you, take the flight.” Now running a 14-strong consultancy with a client base almost exclusively based outside Western Australia, Mr Hewitt said it was by travelling that he won business in Asia and, from there, got the attention of head office at Microsoft, his former employer.
When you dig deeper, it makes sense that Capitalis’ clients are elsewhere.
Family reasons drew Mr Hewitt to Australia after careers as a dot.
com entrepreneur and then online marketing executive with his now biggest client.
But there are few companies in Perth that fit the typical client of Capitalis – big national or multinational players that are a monopoly or duopoly in their market and want to ward off competition and maximise gross profits.
Mr Hewitt claims Lotterywest is his only major local client in a selection that also includes Telstra and Australia Post.
The firm works with business-tobusiness products helping produce better top-of-the-line results by improving sales or reducing the cost of sales.
Mr Hewitt said there had been advantages in being based in WA, though the cost of doing business here had proved more expensive than he anticipated when the move to Perth was planned.
“The only thing I wish I had foreseen is the effect of zero unemployment,” he said.
“That has really stifled growth.” Capitalis has also had to get over the east-west distrust that does create barriers in Australia, though he found that coming from Perth differentiated his company in the marketplace.
Mr Hewitt said his family ultimately decided to return to Perth because it was a place where entrepreneurship was understood and supported.
In the past five years, he’s built a workforce that has largely come from senior roles on the client side of the industry and international experience.
He is currently looking at getting more aggressive with growth plans, hiring a US-based business development executive and actively looking for acquisitions that might fit his plans to both deepen Capitalis’ service offering and broaden the business’s geographic base.
