American Idol made Jordin Sparks, a Glendale 17-year-old, a household name and earned her spots on magazine covers and offers for record deals.
Each week when Idol airs, Sparks gets another big break and so do her Web designers, two entrepreneurs working out of a home office in Phoenix.
Early on, Sparks' fan club commissioned Star Dot Star, a tiny graphic-design and software-development company, to build its Web page. As the singer's fame grew, so did Star Dot Star's.
In a month, the firm more than quadrupled its company Web traffic, hired its first three employees and began courting its first national customers.
Like Star Dot Star, several small businesses often experience a "big break" situation, said Gary Naumann, an entrepreneurship lecturer at Arizona State University's W.P. Carey School of Business.
It usually happens when service-oriented businesses, such as hotels, restaurants, accountants, agents or attorneys, either score a high-profile client or find that they are already serving a client who suddenly hits the big time, Naumann said.
Naumann said small businesses can make mistakes if they are not prepared to handle their big break when it comes. To capitalize on any exposure, a company must offer a top-quality product and service if it is to succeed. No amount of publicity will help grow a low-grade company, Naumann said.
Star Dot Star founders Jim and Lisa Sipe envisioned a combination of marketing, Web development, graphic design and workflow problem-solving.
The couple first created a Jordin logo, a "cartoonized" photo of the singer on a star backdrop. The logo has appeared on television, a billboard at Westgate City Center and hundreds of fan club T-shirts and bumper stickers. They launched www.officialjordinsparks.com, a portal where fans can get accurate information and fan club merchandise. Finally, they organized a way for fans to send the singer fan mail, order products and participate in AI viewing parties.
With the Sipes' work, the Web page was launched a little over a month ago with about 100 viewers in its first week. It now pulls an average of 10,000 page views a week.
Because Star Dot Star links its own company Web site to Sparks' page, its site's traffic has grown from 100 to 1,000 visitors a day over the same period, Jim Sipes said.
"What we've really seen is the potential for growth," he said.
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