OLWM (Online Web Marketing) has a long history compared to most internet companies. By many other industries standards OLWM might not be considered to be that old. In 2014 our little online marketing company turns 17. It’s official start was in 1997, but some of the original seeds were sown in the summer of 1995 when the company founder Shane Brinkerhoff drove throughout Southern Utah looking for businesses to build websites for. He would go town-to-town and door-to-door speaking with business owners about websites and how important it was going to be for them to get their business on the Internet. Most of the businesses he visited were in the travel and tourism industries and many of them hadn’t even heard of the Internet yet.

Keep in mind, it was a tough sale to convince many of these businesses who were dependent on Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon and the Grand Canyon that this new technology would become critical to their success. Thankfully, many of those business owners are still with us today. This is something that our company has a deep-rooted sense of pride about. You couldn’t achieve that without focusing on service and quality at your core in a company. These business owners have become like family to us and our success would not have been possible had they not put their faith in our little start-up company.

The early days of the Internet were wild. Things started moving and growing at a pretty fast rate. Then it happened. In 2005 OLWM was bought up by a national company. The owner group went onto other projects and the remaining staff had to learn to adjust to new management styles. Business still continued, but it was a bit of a challenge. Things were different. Talking with some of the employees who stayed on through this time, they will tell you that the magic was missing. The new management took things in a totally different and parlous direction. Things were looking pretty dark. There was even talk of shutting the doors for good. Then Shane, one of the company founders, in the late fall of 2009  negotiated to take OLWM back and committed to getting things back on track. It was an uphill battle and many of the company’s resources were depleted. It was through a collective effort of the staff and the owner group that we were able to get our magic back.

Like many companies, we have seen change; both internally and online. We’ve made mistakes, we learned from them and we moved on. We’ve seen technology evolve at the speed of light (sometimes at the speed of a 56k modem lol). We’ve seen employees come and go. Some we wish would have stayed and, in a case or two, we’ve had employees that maybe should have left a little sooner; but it’s these lessons that have shaped OLWM into what it is today. Our commitment is the same today as it was in the early days: to help our clients. We do that by driving qualified traffic to their websites at the most affordable price possible.