Design Interact Profile
ID Society Profile
by Joe Shepter
ID Society founders Jonathan Webb and Adam Berkowitz like to tell their story in numbers. There’s $5,000, the start-up cost of the company; 800 the square footage of Webb’s Manhattan loft, which served as the company’s first office; and 3, the number of employees they crammed into that office before moving out.
“I had people’s desks around my bed upstairs,” says Webb. “And we had a whole network in my apartment.”
Needless to say, Webb and Berkowitz come from the gritty, not glamorous, side of the New York design scene. They don’t wander into the office at 11 a.m. in their Prada bathrobes and they don’t conduct business on their cell phones from the Barneys on 5th Avenue. On the plus side, they’ve made money every year since 1998.
Their success stems largely from their focus on two of the more desirable markets on the Web: sports and spirits. Companies in those industries have solid budgets and frequently want their sites to be an expression of that. As a result, ID Society routinely produces some of the most ambitious, built-from-scratch projects you’re bound to see.
Summing up their success, they point to their relationship with their clients as much as their artistry. “Relationships aren’t rocket science,” says Webb. “One of our competitors once went in [on a bid for the New York Jets] with four guys with suits and a huge PowerPoint presentation; it probably wasn’t the best approach to take with a bunch of football fanatics.”
These days, ID Society has almost 20 employees and a client list that includes MTV, the Baltimore Ravens and Diageo.