15 years of Zwischengas - an (editorial) look back
When we started spinning the idea of "Zwischengas" in 2009, we had no exact idea of what it would become. In fact, we didn't even have a name to begin with. We then came up with one after a presumably lively brainstorming session in November 2009 and the first drafts for the new website were created in February 2010.
Over the next eight months, the first version of the Zwischengas platform was developed, and at the last minute we updated the logo design.
On November 23, 2010, exactly 15 years ago, we went live with the first 60 or so beta users, and we now have over 140,000. After one month, we had around 270 visitors, and today we have many millions every year.
In April 2011, we had just under 100 "friends" on Facebook, today we have 43,000. A few thousand photos at the start have grown to over 394,000 to date, and the small repertoire of a few initial editorial contributions has grown to around 16,300 articles/blogs/news ( we have compiled some of the best, most unusual or most memorable contributions in a special channel to mark our 15th birthday).
Almost 7,000,000 facsimiles (magazines, brochures, etc.) have been published to date, and over 80,000 auction transactions have been documented.
Our readers have also played their part, for example with over 20,000 comments, 207,000 bookmarks and the media library, which now contains over 5100 issues.
If you wanted to print everything out, the racks and cupboards in our editorial office would hardly be big enough to store the results. And just imagine this jumble of paper, you would hardly be able to find anything. Not so on Zwischengas, where everything is searchable, right down to the last facsimile and image. That was our vision for Zwischengas right from the start.
When we started back then, we had a time horizon of about two years. We didn't look much further than that, which turned out to be the case in one place or another. Some things simply came about, and larger initiatives needed to be driven forward over several years.
In 2014, we were able to take over and integrate the magazine SwissClassics Revue, and a year later we printed our first 260-page Zwischengas annual magazine, which has since established itself as a popular and eagerly awaited annual review every year-end.
Our starting team (Dani Reinhard, Balz Schreier and myself) was joined by an intern for the first time in August 2014.
We moved twice in 2011 and 2016, with the premises getting bigger each time. And we were able to steadily expand our capacity.
Traffic reached new record highs every year, and we were soon serving many thousands of readers every day. Even outside of Zwischengas, we provided classic car enthusiasts with reading material and thus increased our popularity.
We constantly adapted our technical infrastructure to our growth. The demands on the support side also increased. Initially, one or two readers a week reported problems, but today we answer tens of user queries every day.
Of course, the sales and marketing side also had to adapt to the growth, and soon the little bit of part-time sales alongside editing and support was a thing of the past; this side of our business was also professionalized.
Today we have over ten people working for and with Zwischengas to provide our many readers, more and more of whom are based in the USA, the UK or Thailand, with useful information, exciting stories and attractive images.
We have become a small company, still lean, but much larger than 15 years ago when we started our journey. Quite a few people doubted at the time that we would succeed in realizing the "Zwischengas" vision, but today reader feedback confirms that we have succeeded on a daily basis.
However, this is no reason to slow down now. On the contrary. The new cars from 2010 are almost youngtimers today, the youngtimers from back then are now seasoned oldtimers. We will not run out of material, we will stay on the ball as long as you, our readers, remain loyal to us. Thank you very much!
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