Overbey Says He?s Under Rivals? Rates

Simon Overbey, owner of CRConsulting in Fayetteville, said he has tripled his gross revenue since 1997. The reason, he said, is that his Web marketing company offers more customized solutions and lower costs than local competitors.

“We typically underbid any other firm in town,” Overbey said. “We have faster turnarounds and real personalized service.”

Overbey, 29, averages about 12 clients at a time. He said the firm is primarily interested in building and upgrading Web sites.

“The biggest problem I see is that sites are not marketed properly or not built with marketing in mind,” Overbey said. “I’ve been involved with computers since 1983 and have a really good understanding of hardware and software networking, so we also provide services related to those areas.”

Several of the Internet marketer’s commercial clients are based in Fayetteville — including Brents Co., a clothing manufacturer, and New Market Naturals, which makes water filtration systems — so he recently moved his offices to 200 W. Center St. near the downtown square.

For the last five years, he has operated an office in rural Newton County near the Chimney Rock area of the Buffalo National River. He got the name for his company from Chimney Rock, a geographic formation.

“Simon really helped us clean up our whole accounting system,” said Morty Newmark, owner of New Market Naturals. “We started out with Quickbooks and didn’t really have a good understanding of what we were doing. But he redid our computer systems and made a big difference.”

A Fayetteville native, Overbey attended Stuyvesant High School in New York City where he worked part time in the creative development division of Citibank. He was a programmer in the department that developed the touch screens that are now used for most ATMs. In 1995, he earned a bachelor’s degree in environmental education from Wesley College in Cambridge, Mass. Overbey got his start doing educational technology projects, mainly working with nonprofit organizations.

But gradually, Overbey used his contacts on the East Coast to land local clients in Northwest Arkansas. CRConsulting is available online at www.simonoverbey.com.