From PRW Direct
A small company operated by four partners. We produce instruction material with regards to many subjects, from Line Dance videos to psychology books. The underlying theme of our small company is to provide self help information to customers in various forms in easy "bite size" presentations, the ideal being to assist the customer to learn the most information with the least effort and time.

Our latest venture has been to produce a set of oriental exercises, presented in such a way that the individual can gain benefit with regards to their own health and fitness in a very short period of time. One of our partners is indeed a Grand Master of Martial Arts with over 30 years experience in teaching. He is well versed in the teaching and also in the adaptation of oriental exercise to fit the understanding of the westerner. Simply put the Oriental is quite content to spend 20 to 30 years to learn an exercise form correctly, We in the west with our fast life pace of life would prefer and expect to spend only weeks to achieve a similar goal. Therefore we at PRW Direct have spent may years in adapting these exercises to produce a beautiful set of Oriental exercises, that the westerner and non Martial Artist can benefit from almost instantly. We considered the best vehicle for these exercises was to present them on the Internet. As all of our partners are reasonably computer literate, we assumed the jump to the Internet was a small jump, a very big mistake and on reflection quite, short sited, or should I say short web-sited.

We spent the next 15 months talking to many web designers and companies specialising in getting your company on "The Net". To say that it felt like walking through a mine field would be an understatement. Over a period of time we perceived a pattern to our negotiations with these, "we will get you on the net companies". The obvious aspect is cost, it always started off, we will get you going for about £350, then always changed to, well if you want to do it right, it can't be done for less than about £4,000. Its not necessarily the £4,000 that concerned us, it was the situation that as soon as these web designer realized that our internet knowledge was very limited, the cost appeared to increase proportionally to our lack of "net knowledge". It would also appear that these wiz kid web designers are just out of school, I have nothing against the young, I was young myself once. Its just that they may be good web designers and they have indeed learnt how to openly rip you off, the main issue is that they have little or no subtle business presentation. Our senior partner is in his early 50s, has a number of degrees in the intellectual sciences as well as being a Grand Master of Martial Arts, he is inclined to be somewhat perturbed to be treated like a stupid schoolboy by some spotty 18 year old wiz kid, that just wants to tell you how clever he is.

That was the situation that presented us after 15 months of talking to "web designers", total exasperation and confusion. that is until we "found" Jeff Collins. Jeff is first and foremost a Gentleman, secondly a suburb web designer and thirdly a man of his word. If he says he can do something for £300 he does it for £300. We sent Jeff a manuscript and 6 hours later its on the net for us to look at and play with. We would email various changes that we would like on the site, usually late in the evening, assuming the site would be updated the next day at the earliest. Not with this guy! he would make the changes and email me often with an hour, suggesting that we look at the site to approve the changes. Jeff has spoke to three of our four partners and has spoken to each of us slightly differently based on our different knowledge of the internet. With the gentle presentation that Jeff has, he has made each one of us feel part of the site development. You very quickly conceder Jeff part of "your" team. If you have a problem on any aspect of the site, a technical concept, a particular form required by the Bank or a question with regards to the world pay system, Jeff is just a email away. The astounding thing is that you will usually get the necessary information by return and when I say return I mean before you have had time to switch your computer off!!.

If you are like me, in that you have knowledge in your own field of expertise, but have very little knowledge of the "Internet" and you would like your company to have a presence on the internet, then Jeff is the man that you want and need. In our opinion Jeff Collins is the font of all (Internet) knowledge.

We thought we were looking for a web designer we weren't, we looking for Jeff Collins.