The story so far: Flametree.co.uk is an internet company looking to build a portal to help working women 'balance their lives'. Formed by two friends, Jayne Buxton and Rosemary Leith, Flametree has secured nearly £1 million in private financing and the site is now up and running. The company's backers include Ally Svenson, co-founder of the Seattle Coffee Company.
• It has been a month since The Observer caught up with the staff of Flametree, who seem to be multiplying fast. Only a couple of months after its site launched, Flametree has already outgrown its offices in London's Victoria and is now hunting for new premises.
Nothing too expensive, mind. The company does not intend to blow its financing on a plush office suite.
Fortune seems to be smiling on the start-up. Euan Blair's imbibing activities focused the national attention on teenage drinking and parental responsibility, issues which Flametree's array of experts were well qualified to talk about. As anxious parents clicked on to the site looking for guidance on how to keep young Johnny off the Special Brew, Flametree was able to reorientate the Web pages so that they offered advice, case studies and features devoted to the tricky subject of teenage dipsomania.
The site is now generating 24,000 page impressions a week, a figure that delights the founders. Rosemary says: 'The most interesting statistic is that the average time on the site is 14 minutes. With some other sites people just spend 20 minutes a month.'
This all bodes well when it comes to selling advertising and sponsorship space, though this is still no easy feat. The pair admit finding sponsors is time-consuming. 'It's building a relationship' Jayne says. 'It's not like asking somebody to buy a month's supply of water. It's a much deeper, potentially more interesting but therefore more complex area.'
Flametree's portal provides links to a range of e-commerce partners. The childcare link is proving very popular, and Ten UK, an online company which can help you with everything from finding a nanny at short notice to ordering flowers and food for a dinner party, is also benefiting from its alliance with Flametree, which takes a commission for any new custom it generates.
Given the fact that the company is still finding its feet, emphasis is currently on prioritising. Flametree's founders know they cannot do everything perfectly from the start, so they are using focus groups to decide which parts of the site they should concentrate on improving. 'You've got to concentrate on the core before you start branching out,' Jayne says.
The site's forums are running smoothly, and its webmaster has so far not felt compelled to throw anyone out of the discussion rooms. Chris, Flametree's content and technology manager, has programmed the site's software to alert him if the forum users type one of four banned swear words, but no one has yet felt the urge to be profane.
However, some of the topics discussed are creating a stir. One woman's suggestions that the best way to get children to go to sleep was to zip them into tents generated an uproar.
Getting the site listed with the search engines is now proving one of the firm's biggest challenges. 'It's a real marketing exercise,' Jayne says. The trick is to create the right key words so that search engine users will find the site. 'Do it incorrectly, then you've had it,' says Chris sternly. Companies which are too 'enthusiastic' with their descriptions can fall foul of the search engines - a serious no-no.
But, all in all, things are going well. 'There's a rhythm to it,' says Rosemary.
