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ABOUT US? |
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WHO WE ARE R. Kelly
K. Kelly H. M. Ying Cupcake the Party Clown C. Kelly * No, it’s not a coincidence that most of us have the same last name. We are brothers and sisters (and spouse) and this is a family business. Which takes us to:
HOW WE BEGAN It all began 5 years ago when my sister came to Taiwan to work with me. My wife and I were writing and testing a kindergarten program for a Taiwanese children’s publisher. The three of us spent long hours writing the course material. Along the way we compiled a huge list of games, short stories, flashcard themes, songs and chants, role-plays and mini-plays. My sister and I often talked about why teachers couldn’t find the kind of material we were developing. For example: good stories and role-plays for beginners. Inexpensive, imaginative and comprehensive sets of flashcards. Game books specifically for young children classes. It was so frustrating and time consuming to make supplies each week. Yet it was necessary if we wanted to have fun, and educational classes. Of course we scoured the internet looking for games and ideas. The experience was not entirely positive. There are many ESL sites out there with games, (some very good) and even sites with free clip art. But the excessive amount of time we spent searching for relevant and useful material hardly made what we found worthwhile. It was a conversation I had with my publisher which first gave me the idea for our site. We were discussing the flashcards that would have to be made to go with the program we were writing. My publisher, sighing, explained the high cost of printing flashcards (and the low profitability of printing storybooks and game books when only teachers buy them). At that moment, it occurred to me to put the flashcards, games and stories on the internet. Let schools or teachers print the material out themselves. We should use the Net for what it does best: providing abundant resources at a low cost to both supplier and consumer. As for our future site, I thought, let's do a professional job of it. Let's make it as comprehensive as possible, a one-stop shop for all your children ESL supplies. My sister and I drew up a rough business plan, made a list of potential investors and put out some feelers. We contacted out siblings (clown and lawyer) and they agreed to offer their important, though vastly disparate expertise. The family formed a partnership and our folks took out a line of credit on the house. We then began to work on the project full-time.
A YEAR OF DEVELOPMENT From the start, we knew we wanted to specialize in material for young children classes. But even with all our experience in this field, our trove of games, stories, songs and chants, role-plays and flashcard themes, we still took almost a year to open the site. This was because we were determined to do everything right. Our brother insisted that we have a solid business proposal worked out from the beginning: from concept to development to implementation, to contingency planning. The rest of us partners agreed. It took a month to write the 40-page proposal, but it has been a guide to us ever since. Next we hired Jim Fee, a professional graphic artist, to do the 1100 illustrations that would be on the site when it opened. And then the work really began. We spent month after month writing and editing the games and stories, proofing the artwork, and developing the website itself. On January 21, 2001, we went live. It was a happy day for the Kelly clan. Our first (non-family or friend) customer, from Austria, came 3 days later. Now, we are being used by schools and teachers in over 50 countries around the world. Our parents can now sleep at night knowing that the family house is in no danger of being repossessed.
DEDICATORY NOTE: Thanks to all our members and visitors for your comments and enthusiasm. And a final, special thanks to our nephews and nieces, and all our students for being good sports while we tested and refined our material on you. _______
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