yomad design | web design | web development | web hosting

Nathan's experience in web design and web development began in 1994 while working for a sports retail store located in Seattle. He was tasked with creating an e-commerce portal that would allow users to buy sports merchandise and also provide lead generation for the screen printing portion of the business.

This experience led him to seek out new opportunities in the technology sector and over the next few years, had the chance to work on projects for small and large companies alike: Instant Documents, Hewlett Packard, Eagle Hardware (holiday television commercial), Northwest Minority Supplier Development Council and Mosaix/Lucent Technologies.

Before joining RealNetworks in 1999, Nathan worked with a team of approximately 65 people towards developing an e-commerce solution for CVS Pharmacy http://www.cvs.com. This resulted in the launch of a complete online pharmacy and store front for the largest drugstore chain in the United States. Duties included: developing HTML pages, integrating ASP components, and graphic design.

While working for RealNetworks, a recognized leader in streaming media delivery, his role as a developer and designer on key marketing initiatives for Real.com earned him the Consumer Division Excellence Award for his contributions.

Having the opportunity to fill many critical roles he gained valuable experience including, but not limited to, the following: diverse methods of communication, meeting deadlines and customers' needs in a fast-paced production environment, data analysis, scalable and modular website design, the ability to adapt quickly to changing project requirements, feasibility and impact studies, and effective time and project management skills.

Over the course of 3 years, he played an integral part in two complete site re-designs and six product launches, including RealPlayer 7, RealPlayer 8, RealJukebox 2, RealPlayer GoldPass, and RealOne Player, and I developed solutions to meet the needs of our content partners: AOL, MLB.com, NBA.com, NASCAR, FOXSports.com, CNN and others.

Hans began his career in the web in 1998. After earning his degree in mechanical engineering in 1995, Hans began working at Hewlett Packard updating and maintaining the factory automation software that controlled a warehouse sized assembly line producing six inkjet cartridges per second. Wanting his career to be more related to computing, his hobby since age twelve, Hans left Hewlett Packard in 1998 to start 321 Print.

The focus of 321 Print was to leverage new advances in ink jet printing technologies for the benefit of artists. 321 Print’s primary service was creating limited edition reproductions of paintings on their original medium. Paintings would be scanned into the computer in pieces, reassembled digitally, and printed on canvas or any number of specialty art papers, using archival dye based inks that last hundreds of years. Using the H-P 2500 ink jet poster printer which had just come out, reproductions could be printed on canvas up to three by eight feet, stretched on a canvas stretcher, touched up by the artist, framed, and sold as a limited run reproduction. As opposed to traditional offset printing techniques, which required runs of 500 or more to be cost effective, with 321 Print, an artist could produce as few as one reproduction, and make a profit selling to interested buyers, increasing the return on their painting investment. The primary advertising, sales, and lead generation tool for 321 Print was the Internet.

After operating 321 Print for a number of years Hans decided to move his career into a purely web focused direction. Having advanced his knowledge and experience of web based computing and applications with 321 Print, Hans began a stretch of three years focused on web design and development. Most of Hans’ experience during this time was freelance work for clients and contract work at RealNetworks. Although he didn’t know it at the time, working at RealNetworks would pair him with a skilled designer & developer Nathan Hivick. This was the seed of what was to become Yomad Design.

RealNetworks at the time was growing and expanding faster than anyone could imagine. When Hans began there, he and one other person were the entire web department for realnetworks.com, the corporate and business-to-business web site for the company. Hooking up a spare computer under someone’s desk to the web site in order to add more functionality for marketing efforts was commonplace. After realnetworks.com was absorbed into the main development group at Real, Hans began working with Nathan Hivick, developing real.com the main marketing site of the company, which was receiving over fifteen million hits per month. In addition to real.com, Hans was the primary technical resource for the e-commerce account management application, account.real.com, and led many efforts to standardize development processes and procedures, train developers, and improve efficiency, to help the general functioning of the department.

Hans left RealNetworks in late 2002, and soon after reunited with Nathan Hivick for a Real Estate web venture www.1-800homeowner.com. Homeowner progressed as a site, purchased www.uspropertyforsale.net, and continued pursuing web real estate efforts. After the bulk of the work was done for 1-800Homeowner, Hans and Nathan formed Yomad.