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9/9/2005 - Shane Skillen Recognized as one of Marketing Magazine's Ones to Watch

Marketing Magazine recognizes Shane Skillen for his contribution to the business world. SHANE SKILLEN President and Founder Hotspex, Toronto Age: 28

What's the one thing you can't live without? Cabrina (his fiancée) because "she offers me love, support and intellectual stimulation. Many times she actually has better innovative ideas than I do."

Shane Skillen figures he could have been an engineer. "But it would have been a little too monotonous focusing on a single task for so long," he says.

Skillen is an ideas guy. He thrives on coming up with the new ideas that engineers later turn into reality. "The power of humanity is in new ideas," he says. "That is the joy of humanity-innovation."

It is also, he adds, what companies need to survive, and what Hotspex, his Toronto-based market research firm, can give them.

Hotspex, which Skillen co-founded in 2000, conducts online surveys, gathers respondents' input and insight, crunches the numbers, throws in some focus-group feedback and comes up with new ideas-lots of new ideas-for clients.

Len Gill, president and CEO of Twenty6two International, a Toronto-based venture capital marketing company, first met Skillen about four years ago and he thought right away the upstart was going to revolutionize Canadian market research.

The Hotspex model, says Gill, enables clients to make product decisions based on statistics and data that is so much more useful than traditional focus-group feedback. "I call him the Google of research."

Last year Hotspex presented Labatt with 350 new ideas. One was the Labatt Blue Cold One. Another was the Easy Carry case. Both featured heavily in Labatt's summer marketing strategy.

Other clients include Black and Decker, General Motors, Unilever, McDonald's, Fujifilm and Bell. Skillen was recently contacted by two of the largest consulting houses in the world, both interested in working with Hotspex, and he plans to take the company global in the next two years.

Before then, Skillen will be getting married in Cancun, and is planning an extended honeymoon next year through southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand. Though he admits, with Blackberry in hand (as it always is), he'll spend part of the trip working, looking for still more new ideas for clients and new opportunities for Hotspex. Will his fiancée mind? Nope, he says. She knows it's what makes him happy.-DAVID BROWN