conurus

[conurus]

I was reading the story of making $1,000,000 by selling pixels of a website with envy and amusement.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Million_Dollar_Homepage

Conurus started at about the same time, with me starting to look into the EF lens protocol in November 2004. The million dollar webpage launched in August 2005.

Both were novel ideas and the first of their kinds, but most people would agree that in terms of technical difficulty and the amount of work required what conurus did was several orders of magnitude higher.

They achieved the million dollar mark and the founder became a celebrity. We are in fact a famous name among professional and serious photographers, but little known outside. Our million dollar is nowhere in sight. We have a long way to go - that is if we are to ever reach it to begin with. I am still working 18 hours a day 7 days a week, but my sales target was set at only a fraction of that. After all, there are only a limited number of Contax autofocus lenses out there. The lenses themselves are no longer produced, which means sooner or later our market will saturate.

We could reach the million dollar mark more quickly by focusing more on expanding our customer base, but we choose to focus instead on quality. Before we sell you a product, we must make sure we are able to stand behind it and support the product. It is not good enough to be just apparently working. It must actually work, and work well enough for professional use. Most people do not understand why we are so obsessed about quality. Why don't we ship a half-finished product because most customers cannot tell or do not care the difference? The answer is that some of our customers are wedding photographers, photojournalists, travel photographers working in the extremities of the world, and their images may last a lifetime (for a wedding) or published nationally or internationally. When I see these phenomenal images from our customers, I know my hard work is worth the effort, and I know my stubborn pursuit for quality is justified. You have to see that this is much bigger than reviving your expensive lens collection. If you think about how much is at stake, you would understand why I am always on my toes and never rest on my laurels.

[doctorb]

Your striving for quality comes through loud and clear in your product. That's why most of us find the lenses that you convert for us treasures to be used and thoroughly enjoyed for years to come.

Your hard efforts are appreciated by so many.