RORY MACLEAN
News Editor

Three years after starting an online web design business, University of Saskatchewan students Dustin Knittig* and Chris Hanson are seeing their business — Vaiz Enterprises — rapidly expand and will soon be taking on their fifth staff member.

As student businesses often do, it started out small.

“We started out just doing web design,” said Dustin Knittig. “I happened to come across someone that needed a website done.”

The decision to make it a business came naturally to the two arts and science undergraduates, since they are both of the entrepreneurial mindset, he said.

“I’ve just always dreamt of being in business for myself,” said Knittig.

“I don’t want anybody to be able to tell me what my limits are.”

They began by just designing websites, but in the past year the business has expanded into two new fields, marketing and information technology.

Vaiz will facilitate traditional ads for businesses, such as billboards or newspaper ads, as well online ads, including social networking sites.

The company now also provides what they call IT solutions. This could involve hardware and software upgrades, tech support on any day or time and network development for businesses.

The marketing and web design aspects are done by Knittig and Hanson, the IT work is done by one of their four staff.

After expanding their business into marketing and IT work in the last year, revenues are noticeably up, he said.

“This is our first year sort of doing it full time,” said Knittig.

At this point the two are not personally taking in any profits however — all the extra revenue is still being reinvested in the business.

“You reap what you sow, I suppose,” said Hanson.

The two students have a vision for the Saskatchewan technology industry, which they say is years behind other provinces.

There are some in the industry who are still operating on Windows 98, said Hanson aghast.

Hanson believes that as the provincial economy becomes less dependent on agriculture and more built around the natural resource industry, technology will begin to play an even more integral role. The two think they are well positioned to take a leading role in this change.

“That’s actually one of our goals; not just to get caught up but to move it forward,” said Hanson.

Knittig says he used to think he would have to move to Calgary to make it in the business world but now he feels it’s better to start in a less developed market.

The lower level of competition here gives them an opportunity to get an early edge on everyone, he said.

Hanson says the next step for Vaiz will be to ensure the new parts of their business fully develop.

“I think we took some pretty big steps in the last year”¦. The next step will be establishing those.”

While still turning over all the profits to expand their business, becoming wealthy is never far from their minds.

“If I didn’t feel that it was a reasonable expectation I wouldn’t do it,” said Knittig.

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*This article originally incorrectly identified Dustin Knittig as David Knitting. We regret the error.