EverythingCelica -> CelicaHobbyEverythingCelica was founded in 2001 by
Isaac DeCoursey [
id242.com]. As the website and its services grew, so did his responsibilities with the events, the auto parts e-commerce store, maintenance of the large social networking forums and managing the constantly growing abundance of reference materials.
He went from being a simple Celica enthusiast, to being an event coordinator & photographer, an html/php/sql programmer, setting up and maintaining a dedicated hosting server, running an aftermarket auto parts pickup, packaging and shipping company averaging fifty to a hundred orders every day, along with keeping up with the daily feedback emails from customers and casual website members... all the "fun stuff" that a larger company usually staffs many employees to maintain.
By the time 2005 rolled in, he was working non-stop 16-hour days for months on end. He found that he didn't have enough time to continue to add new features or constantly update the site's infrastructure to better deal with the traffic spikes, keep up with daily pickups, packaging and shipping demands, attend all the local Celica events and photograph them, and even reply to all of the hundreds of received emails for days on end (though, every email that landed in the inbox was read)... all the usual day-to-day maintenance which EverythingCelica required.
In July 2004, Toyota announced the Celica (as well as the MR2) would be discontinued in the United States at the end of the 2005 model year due to lack of sales. Celica sales hit 52,406 units in 2000, but dropped sharply to 14,856 in 2003. Just 8,710 Celicas were sold in 2004, and only 3,113 were sold in 2005. The sports coupe market, in general, was rapidly shrinking. The Subaru XT6, Nissan 240SX, Honda Prelude and Mazda RX-7 were already gone and the Acura RSX was soon to follow.
With all of that in mind, in April of 2005, Isaac foresaw that there would be a sharp decline in the "customization-scene" interest over the immediate upcoming years. He did the numbers, and watched the traffic of EverythingCelica.com and its competitors. Already completing what he intended to accomplish, building one of the top Toyota Celica Enthusiast websites of that time. It was time to move forward with his next big projects. He tied up all of the loose ends by closing up shop and closing out/refunding all outstanding orders. He notified all of his business associates of his future plans, then moved forward with his new development projects. It was extremely tough to quit working on every aspect of EverythingCelica, something which he so thoroughly loved doing, but it was impossible to give it the incredible amount of maintenance and attention it needed. In addition, the industry as a whole, had peaked and began showing signs that it was headed towards a decline.
As a new part-time arrangement for Isaac, with the intended goals for maintaining CelicaHobby.com (outlined up top), this allows a perfect balance of time for advancing his professional career and working on these types of side-projects and the sharing of information, all of which he enjoys doing.
