The GDI Story: Planning How to Pitch the Idea to Samoan Authorities
Samoa is an island nation in the Pacific. More specifically it is part of a group of islands and islets (small islands) in the south-central Pacific Ocean which lies about 1,600 miles (2,600 km) to the northeast of New Zealand. It is a separate and independent entity from its U.S. cousin, American Samoa. The government of Samoa consists of a Prime Minister and aParliament with a King as titular head. It has a wide range of exports ranging from coconut cream and beer, to automotive wiring-harnesses and cigarettes.
Even though they thought that having the ability to sell .ws websites was a good idea, like all business professionals Mike and Alan understood that having an idea is one thing, but executing the idea is quite another. Still, they knew that the idea of marketing an alternative to the .com extension had tremendous promise.
They just had to figure how to make it work.
They both realized that they'd need more than just perseverance and a little luck to pull it off.
As Mike said, "Remember, we were paddling against the current... Back then, most people were still branding businesses with dot com. Quite frankly, nearly everyone thought we were wasting our time."
After a long and involved series of overseas phone calls and e-mails to Samoan officials, a date was finally arranged so that Mike and Alan could meet with the leading figures of Samoa, including the King and his Prime Minister.
They had less than a week, but Mike and Alan were able to put together a presentation detailing their plans for their taking over the technical and marketing operations of Samoa's top-level domain extension, ".WS."
Wanting to get everything right, Mike and Alan spent the time they had devouring masses of information about the nation of Samoa, familiarizing themselves with as many of its customs and traditions as possible. While Alan was busy acquainting himself with appropriate etiquette when meeting with Samoan government officials, Mike's job was to work on ensuring that the proposal they would present to the Samoans was as interesting and worthwhile as possible.
"I had to make certain the Samoans understood that we looked at the opportunity as a joint relationship that would ultimately benefit their entire nation," said Mike.
Still, one major risk worried Alan and Mike: despite having what they knew was a great idea, they really didn't have anything significant to immediately offer the country, except for their personal and proven business ingenuity and know-how. Although Mike and Alan were known as successful marketing experts in the U.S., convincing the hierarchy of an entire nation to trust them on what would appear to just be a hunch by two unknowns from America would be difficult, at best.
"There was mounting pressure by some of our consultants to offer the Samoan government cash up-front. Otherwise, they felt we'd lose the deal and someone else could come in and take over," Alan said. "However, we knew the culture of Samoa was much different than here in the States, and that 'buying off' anyone is not the way we do business!
As a result," Alan continues, "we came up with an alternative proposal we thought better accommodated the cultural demands of the country."
