Local Girls merge their Online and Real Life Worlds.

... Client, turned friend, turned business partner. Sue and Andy have quite a unique story to tell about how they came to be business partners for such a unique product.

While browsing for interesting to present to her clients, graphic designer Andy Kahle came across an electronic social character called a Poken. Thinking no more of the Poken, than it was an interesting idea to use in place of business cards when networking, Andy forwarded it to Sue Whittaker. While the idea sparked Sue’s interest on behalf of her Social Media clients, she had bigger ideas when she discovered there wasn’t an Australian distributor.
“What do you think about the idea that we become the Australian distributor,” Sue posed the question to Andy. “We could set it up as a side business, and see where it takes us.”

And so Askew Vision, a name derived from Sue and Andy’s initials, and meaning a little left of centre, was born, and currently gets to share the girl’s attentions with their own businesses.

During her long service leave, and with a little bit of moral support from her friend Andy, Sue Whittaker went from being an office manager to one company to running her own business as virtual office manager to a variety of small businesses. “It was a huge step to take,” said Sue “but business really took off, and it really surprised me how many people needed my type of services.” Sue has found herself providing everything from faxing promotional letters, looking after Facebook pages to overseeing the company accounts through her iManage Professionals business. “The variety keeps the job interesting,” commented Sue.

Andy Kahle progressed from Apprentice of the Year as a compositor working on newspapers, to creating websites for an ISP. But a few years ago, when taking a break from the pressures of graphic design work, Andy found herself setting up her new web and graphic design business from home. There were a few personal struggles along the way, but Sue was always on the other end of the email with encouragement and support, both as a client and as a friend.

So with both Sue and Andy having businesses in marketing, it seemed only logical that they could become business partners to promote this new Poken product to the public and businesses alike.

“We have discovered this new social networking problem that everyone has, and until now, there hasn’t been good solution,” Andy explains. “Just imagine updating all of your social network accounts with more than 100 new friends in less time than it’ll take you to find a working pen? There’s no scribbling of screen names, URLS or email addresses on little scraps of paper. Just Poke’m and you’re done. And you can do it anywhere.
“If you’re a business, you may hand them your business card, or you could write your phone number on their hand. But phone numbers are just the start of our social network now that we’ve all got email, Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin accounts. And how about keeping up with all the changes your extended social network of friends makes to their contact details, especially when it’s not unusual for people to have 100 plus friends on any one account?

“Say you’re at a friend’s party, and meet someone you want to keep in touch with, you can quickly exchange details of your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn accounts by simply touching the palms of your four-fingered Poken. They use short-range RFID to transfer all your social networking profiles to each other. Then when you get home, plug your Poken into a USB port, and the data is transferred to your personal Poken profile on our secure online hub. It’s really just that simple.” Andy gives a sly wink, “now, are you still looking for a pen that works?”

If you’d like to see more about his unique Poken character, just call in online at PokenOz.com.au