Name of your website?Ireland of Old
Your name?
Garrett Heaver
Your Location (city, etc)
Dublin
Please give us a short summary of your website?
Based right in the heart of the Irish capital, we specialize in the reproduction of historic images. Black and white images of a bygone era that were once painstakingly colored using a technique involving a series of lithographic stones and many hours of meticulous work.
What inspired you to launch your own website?
Well the other founding member of Ireland of Old, Geoff, is a photographer by profession and has long held a special interest and enthusiasm for historic Irish images so to create an Irish images site was really just a synergy of our own respective professions and interests.
When did you launch your first website?
The idea originally surfaced about a year or so ago over a few pints as is always the way! It wasn't until early 2008 that we both got time to actually put it into full swing.
How did you decide on a name for your website?
A few ideas floated around for a while, shot-in-ireland being one, but we though that had too many negative associations so we decided to call it after what the pictures actually are, Ireland of Old.
What makes your website different from other offerings?
We pride ourselves on being different. We don't believe that a simple title does justice to any historic image. It needs context. Thats why you'll find a description and in most cases, a brief landmark history, under every image on our site. We focus on the hand production of every order, thus ensuring the highest quality standard.
What is your eventual goal?
The eventual goal is to create the largest resource of historic Irish images.
How does your investment of time and money balance against your success?
Regardless of its general commercial success, we're extremely happy with the way Ireland of Old has turned out. Development took longer than expected by then that's usually the case on projects of this nature. Its been worth it no matter what happens.
If you had an unlimited development budget for development, how would you change your site?
Stay tuned! As a web developer by profession we have the enviable position that we can very quickly roll out new ideas and functionality. And we're not giving away any of our new ideas!
If your site got really big, really quickly, would you be able to keep up with the demand?
Certainly, we have a very scalable system. Both in terms of web traffic management for the Ireland of Old site and general production capacity.
What unexpected costs and headaches have you had to deal with?
Nothing unexpected really, we thought before we went into this venture that credit card processing facilities might be difficult to obtain but it actually went easier than expected. I think that when its a real tangible product like the picture on Ireland of Old then you're already on the right footing.
What is your website address?
Ireland of Old
