By Adam Gifford
A small Auckland animation and graphics company, Inkspot Digital, has scored a leg up into the lucrative United States market.
Leading Apple reseller MicroWarehouse is bundling 500 of Inkspot's Cliptoonz clip art images with MicroWarehouse's Macintosh OS9 launch promotion.
Cliptoonz will also be featured in MicroWarehouse's catalogue, which reaches about
3 million US Mac users.
Inkspot marketing director Louise Rutten says the company expects many people who get the free CD to pay for an upgrade to the full product, which contains 1800 images.
Inkspot is also getting help from Apple itself to promote its product through Apple's 11 education resellers in the US.
Ms Rutten says the company expects this could earn it millions of export dollars, especially if it matches the 65 per cent penetration it has achieved in New Zealand schools.
Cliptoonz was developed for use on PCs. Ms Rutten was asked for a Mac version when she was in the United States earlier this year showing the product to distributors. "I didn't let on we didn't have one."
Instead, she researched the market and discovered there were few image products available in the Pict format used by the AppleWorks office suite, which is shipped on the iMac and iBook.
"Most of what was available was not of the quality required for Mac users, who are used to high quality," she said.
Back in Auckland, Inkspot's developers spent three weeks working out how to change their images over to Pict, and a further two weeks testing to ensure there were no bugs.
The first order was shipped to the US six weeks after the project started.
Much of the work was done after business hours at Magnum Mac's Newton Rd showroom because Inkspot has only PCs - something which was a source of considerable amusement at Apple.
Ms Rutten said Cliptoonz are designed so users can produce images themselves to create themes or stories.
They can also be animated for use on web sites or Powerpoint presentations.
The company has a new CD, Clipart for Kiwis, due before Christmas.
It also plans an image download site containing images and animation for use in print and web sites.
