Tech startup of the month.

• Author: Peterson, Eric
• Position: Hightech - Boulder energy consultants

TEXTURE MEDIA INC. DENVER

WWW.TEXTUREMEDIA.COM

FOUNDED: 2000

INITIAL LIGHTBULB: A group of Boulder energy consultants jumped careers three years ago and launched a tech-savvy multimedia design house and integrated marketing agency that has quickly earned a national reputation. At the 2000 Outdoor Retaiter Show in Salt Lake City, one of the aforementioned consultants--Brendan Kiernan, now Texture Media's managing director--first crossed paths with Andrew Davison, then national sales manager for performance clothing manufacturer Pearl Izumi USA in Broomfield. Within a few months, Kiernan persuaded Davison to come on board with Texture Media as president and CEO.

"At that time, it was a collection of people really motivated by idealism," Davison recalled. "It really started without a lot of deep thought ... more as a vision and an idea of cool than it did of a business strategy."

The fledging agency cut its teeth designing marketing multimedia for such outdoor events as the National Whitewater Rafting Championships. Soon, Texture Media attracted a broader clientele and then began receiving a procession of industry awards and invitations to prestigious conferences. It was known for a cutting-edge portfolio underpinned by a school of thought known as experience design, a discipline largely based on studying how humans interact with technology.

Texture Media relocated to downtown Denver in April 2002, and is now busy with projects ranging from software development to market research to video production.

IN A NUTSHELL: Texture Media specializes in projects built around the concept of experience design, "it's been around since the mid-'80s, and it drew its background from cultural anthropology and cognitive psychology," Davison said. Paid Alto, Calif.-based IDEO, with $350 million in annual billings, is one of the field's better-known practitioners, applying the same tenets to product development that Texture Media applies to Web sites and DVDs.

"As the Internet is developing, the ideas of experience design are being applied to the interactive medium." explained Davison. "We're not a traditional Web development or technology company--we're a communications company."

Two examples of Texture Media's experience design: Climb Sepu, a film project for mountaineering gear manufacturer Marmot and W.L. Gore, the makers of Gore-Tex: and Wells Fargo Link, a consumer-rewards project debuting this month for Wells Fargo.

For Marmot and Gore, the agency produced...