Hello, and welcome to the Kizmato blog. There’s more to this little website business than meets the eye. We are two girls who are passionate about a lot of things, and we want to incorporate them into this business. Kizmato grew out of a fun project we’d been working on, Dirty Gourmet, and it grew because we saw a need to help out local small businesses. The mission hasn’t changed, and here’s the history and future plans.

Aimee and I (Emily) are cousins. Our families have been close since we were born, taking frequent camping trips together throughout our childhood. Aimee’s little brother Jesse is my age, and I spent most of my time with him. We were total terrors, and didn’t care much about spending time with Aimee. My family eventually moved to Florida, and we saw a lot less of Aimee’s family for years. It took until I graduated college and moved to California for Aimee and I to become close. And it happened fast.

We bonded over the next few years at more family get-togethers and camping trips, and then Aimee went on a bike tour up the coast of California and across Canada! When she came back, she and her cycling partner, Mai-yan, had plans to start an outdoor food blog. She and I realized we shared our love of the outdoors and cooking, and I joined the two girls to start Dirty Gourmet.com. Aimee was already a web developer, and Mai-yan a web designer, so the site kicks ass. I had to learn something quick to keep up, so I learned XHTML/CSS.

Dirty Gourmet continues to grow, and has gotten popular. One of the biggest things that has come out of it is a big response from friends who want us to help them build websites for their businesses. And so Kizmato was born. Neither Aimee nor I had day jobs when we started, and we realized that we could provide affordable websites by starting with customizable themes and building them on WordPress. This is still our main source of business, because it allows our clients to take charge of their site after it’s built. The themes are so customizable that we can usually find a basic layout that will work for a client, and then tweak it to become consistent with their brand. We can do it quickly enough this way to keep it affordable. The small size of our company has allowed us to work with our clients on a very personal basis, however, and we can add as much customization as they want. It has kept us very flexible.

We now realize that we really want to be promoting local businesses in any way that we can, especially the businesses that are built around a cause we believe in. As you might guess from our website’s design, we are very into gardening, which also incorporates the “slow food” movement. If you know of a business that is cool and local (to your area, wherever you are), tell them about us. We’d like to give discounts to those who are helping out their communities, so they can do a better job of it by having an awesome, findable, usable website.

We also want to get out and participate in events when possible. A few plans in the works:

• Habitat for Humanity Workday, Lawndale, CA. Date:TBD
• San Gorgonio Wilderness Association Cleanup, Mill Creek, CA, Date: May 14, 2011

If you show up to help out with us, you’ll get a coupon for a website. It’s transferable, but you only get one. If you’re lucky, we’ll be there representing Dirty Gourmet as well, and will have food to share.

Those are our ideas for now. If you’ve got more ideas for us, shout them out! We’re still in brainstorming mode, and are a very flexible business.