EMPLOYEE HANDBOOK

ABOUT MELLENGER

So, you're a Mellengerm. Welcome!

Well hello there, new recruit! You've made it through the hiring gauntlet. Now you're like, "Who are these people? What's this about? Where am I? Who am I?" and so on. Beyond such existential musings, you may be wondering what kind of projects are best for us or what tools we use. Maybe you're a polite person who's reading this because someone told you to. We'll never know! Either way, the mOS is here to answer all your questions.

Our Story

Andrew Mellenger started Mellenger Interactive in 2012 as a one-man operation. He's writing this, so he's gonna switch to first person now if that's okay.

First of all, the name. I wanted to call the company "Make" or "Useful Tools" or "Intelligent Design" but all those names were rejected as being too broad. Instead, the Registrar chose my fifth choice, which was Mellenger Interactive, and here we are a decade later. I kept it general because I've always had a thing for smart, simple solutions, and I'd learnt that while that solution isn't always a website (or even something digital), it's almost always interactive in some way.

Our Founder & CEO

I was in my twenties in the '90s, and started a couple of companies as a way to sell computers and get access to the latest PC hardware. Websites were just getting popular, and lots of people wanted computers so they could get online. I wanted more hardware, so I figured out how to set up and host my own website that reviewed hardware. It would help me extend my reach and attract manufacturers who might give me stuff.

Once I started to understand websites, I was drawn to the rapid innovation and tried to learn as much as I could. I went to night school, talked my way into jobs, then started working as a contractor for an advertising agency, which turned into a full-time job.

I worked there for 5 years, and got increasingly frustrated with the way project budgets were allocated. It was all about the campaign, and big money was thrown at driving people to landing pages to submit forms or enter competitions. The minute that campaign was over, all that traffic and brand value evaporated and you had to start over. Stupid, right?

Digital Platforms

I was at the agency from 2007 to 2012, when social media was starting to take off en masse. Slashdot, Digg.com, MySpace, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram; all of these platforms were growing by making something useful and building an audience around that. In 2010, the best way to organize a party was to create a Facebook event and invite your friends, photos were getting uploaded to websites rather than printed and smartphones were taking over.

Philosophy

Mellenger Interactive was started with that in mind. How can we find that unique piece of information or special tool that makes your company unique, and then build a fun interface for it and put it on the free and open web?

We don't get to do this on every project, but we're always on the lookout for an opportunity to. If you're working on a website and have an idea for a useful tool that would keep visitors coming back, tell us! We'll try to make it happen.

Early Highlights

Beginnings

I started the company in March 2012, and officially incorporated in May. We hired our first full-time employee by the summer, and by Christmas there were three of us.

Oppy

Ben and I were working out of a former art studio in Olympic Village when we got the chance to pitch to James Milne, the VP of Marketing for The Oppenheimer Group. He came to visit us for the pitch, and we presented our deck on an 80" TV sitting on sawhorses. Somehow, it worked! They were the first big client that we won as Mellenger Interactive.

Fresh Sheet

This was Ben's idea. Could we build a completely interactive availability calendar into the new oppy.com website that wasn't annoying to edit and served an actual sales function? Hell yeah, we could and did.

Recent Highlights

Shopify

In 2020 we were sharing a basement shared work space with a scrappy low-sugar candy company called SmartSweets. They were only in there because they were doing renovations on a new office nearby and needed a place to work. We would overhear stories about how they had vendor after vendor overpromise and underdeliver on their shopify store. The site was a mess and they didnt know what to do.

We had no Shopify experience at the time, but we did have what these other vendors didn't, integrity and a commitment to solving the tech issues so they could get back to their business.

MellenCare

The idea of a retainer is not a new one, but our spin on it is sort of unique. Invoice on the 1st of the month for a set amount of hours which never expire. Spend the month using those hours. If less they roll over, if more then increase the retainer. Its a simple method that keep the client and the vendor responsible to use the hours efficiently.

SmartSweets was also our first retainer client and they still are 5 years later. We now have 20+ clients on this model and its a nice low-stress way to partner with clients and get some stuff done.

Move2help

During the pandemic of 2020 there was wage subsidies available for businesses who had lost work due to government shut downs. We were affected for a couple of months and I suggested that we go to a 4 day work week to just chill, go for walks and make sourdough.

Instead the team chose to build a SAAS product, a fundraising tool for non-profits called Move2help. It connected fitness trackers, donations and team work in a fun social way so non profits could raise money using accountability and healthy competition.

We had a ton of success with it over 5 years, but have decided to move on to other things by the end of 2025.

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