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Chris Howard Thanks, Jeff. What is unsaid here is the emotional toil this placed on all of us who’d built livelihoods around Headway, whether we be support staff, third party devs, or web site designer/developers. At the height of Headway’s success, many people were making solid incomes based on it. However, their (unnecessary) failure hit us all hard, and indeed the plummeting income I experienced was a factor in the failure of my marriage. Fortunately, my last plugin, Architect, was theme agnostic but with all the crap of last year, it’s marketing, development (and support at times) has been neglected. Slowly getting that back on track. There is no satisfactory reason for Headway’s demise, other than Grant and Clay didn’t have the skills to grow the business as it desperately needed, and nor did they seem to make the effort to learn or bring in those skills. Headway could have easily competed against the rise of the page builders with aggressive marketing, supporting its community and development of a thriving third-party add-on ecosystem. Headway had the potential to set the standard for WordPress page builders instead of trying to play catch up. Headway v4 should have been about more seamless integration with the WordPress post/page editor. Unfortunately, at its height of popularity, Clay and Grant did not put enough revenue back into strengthening the business. Although, in truth, Headway’s demise should have been expected after the debacle of the version 2 to version 3 process, when they released v3 without a converter for sites on v2, promised they would but never delivered and showed scant regard for customers caught out by that. They lost a lot of web designer/devs after that, and these are your most import allies in this space. Their loyalty and word-of-mouth marketing are gold. It’s exactly why Beaver Builder has succeeded. Headway provides a salient reminder to us all about how not to run a business, and, for me, not putting so much faith and trust in one income source.
Chris Howard
Thanks, Jeff.
What is unsaid here is the emotional toil this placed on all of us who’d built livelihoods around Headway, whether we be support staff, third party devs, or web site designer/developers.
At the height of Headway’s success, many people were making solid incomes based on it.
However, their (unnecessary) failure hit us all hard, and indeed the plummeting income I experienced was a factor in the failure of my marriage. Fortunately, my last plugin, Architect, was theme agnostic but with all the crap of last year, it’s marketing, development (and support at times) has been neglected. Slowly getting that back on track.
There is no satisfactory reason for Headway’s demise, other than Grant and Clay didn’t have the skills to grow the business as it desperately needed, and nor did they seem to make the effort to learn or bring in those skills.
Headway could have easily competed against the rise of the page builders with aggressive marketing, supporting its community and development of a thriving third-party add-on ecosystem.
Headway had the potential to set the standard for WordPress page builders instead of trying to play catch up. Headway v4 should have been about more seamless integration with the WordPress post/page editor.
Unfortunately, at its height of popularity, Clay and Grant did not put enough revenue back into strengthening the business.
Although, in truth, Headway’s demise should have been expected after the debacle of the version 2 to version 3 process, when they released v3 without a converter for sites on v2, promised they would but never delivered and showed scant regard for customers caught out by that.
They lost a lot of web designer/devs after that, and these are your most import allies in this space. Their loyalty and word-of-mouth marketing are gold. It’s exactly why Beaver Builder has succeeded.
Headway provides a salient reminder to us all about how not to run a business, and, for me, not putting so much faith and trust in one income source.
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