Our latest Customer Recognition Program feature is with Tom Cuylaerts of Edge.be, a digital marketing and web development organisation based in Antwerp, Belgium. Edge.be has been an Openprovider customer since 2004 and is also a valued Openprovider Member.
At university in Belgium, Tom Cuylaerts proved that professors could learn a few things from their students.
Even in his personal life, the Edge.be CEO has never feared charting his own course. “I was a DJ before everybody was a DJ,” he says with a smile.
Using the money earned from those early days as a DJ, he bought an XT/286, the second-generation of IBM PCs. This was at a time when students were still writing their theses on typewriters. The new technology caught the attention of those around him and after directing 30 people to a shop where they sold computers Tom said, “I’m going to do that myself.”
How to fight the fear of change
At university, Tom was enrolled in an Electronic Data Gathering course that was, in his opinion, no longer fit for purpose in the new world of computers and data. What’s more, his professor at the time was staunchly against having “IBM clones” on campus. It was his way or the highway. As he would do again and again in the years that followed, Tom chose his own way.
He says it was “a very easy decision” to drop out. “I said to myself ‘I can’t learn anything here, it’s old-fashioned stuff.’” Soon Tom was selling IBM-compatible computers to the university he was leaving behind. He was showing the institution the way the world was going.
When asked about where his willingness to challenge the status quo and desire to see the world in a different way comes from, Tom points to his upbringing. As a child, Tom’s father had two jobs: one that provided for the family and the other that allowed him to follow his real passion as an artist. He starred in movies and plays. “And my father always encouraged me to do what I wanted to do,” he says.
Tom also fondly remembers the teachers from the Jesuit college he attended, people who “encouraged me to question everything.” He hasn’t stopped reimagining the world since.
Staying ahead of internet trends
With his computer-selling business coinciding with the early days of the rise of the World Wide Web, it was time to pivot to the internet. Edge.be started with five people in 1996. There were moments of doubts in what was still an extremely uncertain landscape, but Tom and his team resolved to trust the process and bide their time. Most of the sites were still rigid HTML, and Edge.be carved out a strong niche in the area of content management.
Competition in the content management space soon became fierce and Tom, like the shark that has to keep moving to keep surviving, kept probing for new emerging trends before they became trends. Paid advertising came calling. “At the time when nobody else was doing it, it was very cheap,” Tom says. Edge.be has since used the experience and knowledge developed since to provide specialized services in online marketing, social media advertising, website creation, SEO, and E-Commerce.
But technology is only one element in the equation of modern business success. Tom is quick to point to another: people.
“I’m a very bad manager”
Over the past three decades, Tom has proven his ability to have his finger on the pulse, to understand what is happening in the world around him in order to anticipate change. But he is also highly self-aware of his shortcomings.
“It’s important to know what you’re good at and what you’re not good at,” he says. “I think I’m a very bad manager.” This, perhaps, explains why Edge.be as an organization pays so much attention to finding professionals who are the right fit. “We look for nice people that are passionate. That doesn’t mean that they have to live for their work,” Tom says. “But they need to show a curiosity in what they do.”
Curiosity is a common thread that runs right through the middle of Edge.be. It’s right there on the company website: “We combine 28 years of experience with childlike curiosity.”
Edge.be is a small company by choice. It chooses the customers it wishes to work with. “We like promoting stuff from people we admire,” says Tom, “people on the cutting edge like Sarah Coppens of Waer Waters, the most beautiful wellness resort of the Benelux.”
Averse to a get-rich-quick strategy, Edge.be accepts customers that it can actually help rather than being a mass supplier. Tom and his team have no problem directing customers to a more suitable provider – even if it’s a competitor. Perhaps the time just isn’t right. “Sometimes the market isn’t ready,” he says. “Instead of forcing it, just wait.”
Becoming a trusted business partner
That openness is appreciated by potential customers. Many have returned to talk a few years down the line when the time was right. “A good service is a supplier that doesn’t immediately do what I ask,” says Tom. “If I ask for something, they should say ‘Is this the real problem that needs to be solved?’ or do we need to do something else. That’s what I’m looking for in a supplier, someone who will question my question.”
This collaborative approach to building lasting relationships with customers is shared here at Openprovider. It can be seen when we assist customers in carrying out automated bulk domain transfers or when we help them choose the right option when it comes to Membership plans.
It’s little wonder, therefore, that we’ve been working with Edge.be since 2004 – why change a winning formula?
