www.Naeem.co.za

A few days ago, after the last HeavyChef session, Fred from Ideate mailed me a short interview.

About Ideate: Fresh new ideas. It’s about small business. It’s about South Africa. It’s also about money, innovation, progress, and gob-smackingly brilliant concepts. Most importantly, it’s about the people who come up with these concepts. We aim to examine the crazy, hyper-charged world of the small business owner, the serial entrepreneur – and hopefully learn a few things on the way.

Read the full interview here
http://www.ideate.co.za/2009/04/09/1-min-with-a-superhero-naeem-mayet-from-autostylecoza/

Nice to see Jump Shopping, the guys behind the South African E commerce Awards, giving a physical recognition for winning an award.

Autostyle Motorsport has won the award for Best Automotive website in 2006, 2007  & 2008.
Will we win 2009? I sure hope so.

A layout overhaul is already underway and should be up in a few weeks time and and a few other plans are in the pipeline to keep us ahead of our competitors as well as grow our online presence.

March 2009 saw Autostyle receive its highest ever traffic, 144 000 visitors viewing 1.79million pages. I’m curious to see where we rank up on WASA (websites association of  South Africa)

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I started a little crowdsourcing project at Autostyle.co.za -

The contest is simple.  Design a T-Shirt for us, winning design gets a R2000 Autostyle shopping voucher.

Visit the Autostyle Blog to find out more on about this. Rules, closing time and our logo are all listed there

Why crowdsource?
For starters it’ll bring some new perspective and fresh designs.  Normally we would choose from a handful of designs for t-shirts.  Getting the public in on it brings tons of new designs and concepts.

It creates a buzz around the Autostyle brand too.   Bloggers have written about it, twitter uses have retweeted my messages, forum users discuss and exchange ideas.

2008 has been a roller coaster of note, looking back on it, it was a time of huge gains, losses, experiences and much much more.

In the real world,

- March 15th, Married! – Naeem.co.za & Saaleha.com – a union of internet junkies
- Honeymoon to Singapore, Langkawi Island and Malaysia’s Kuala Lampur
- A few weeks later, trip to the far east – Hong Kong and China’s Shanghai, Guangzhou & Beijing
- Hijacked! Got my South African colours when 2 gunmen stormed my home and made off with my car.
- The Autostyle Durban Motorshow – even bigger then before.
- Recovered! My Audi was recovered in Soweto, in mint condition with a newly fitted windscreen.
- Bought another house. This time on the doorstep of our local Masjid, bigger with alot more ‘room for potential’.
- Autostyle voted 2008 Best Automotive Website. That’s the 3rd year in a row.
- Autostyle moved into its stunning new  Johannesburg showroom.

My online adventures never cease to amaze me, always learning new technologies, ideas & meeting all sorts of amazing people.
- WordPress is my App of the year!
- MyUmmah.co.za is fast establishing itself in the South African muslim niche. What started as an online storage for Islamic content I find – now receives over 11 000 page impressions a month with just over 6000 visitors.
- Kasa.org.za A quick wordpress powered website for Khitmatul Awaam: South Africa’s first non profit hajj & umrah foundation.
- SoccerStuff.co.za – A little sideline service from our Autostyle team. We do loads of imports and many agencies & corporate gift companies we work with indicated the need for custom branded soccerballs. Yes we are jumping in on 2010mania
- MuslimJobs.co.za – a little job portal for our muslim community, plans are to revamp it and add some extra features to it.

2009 promises much more new projects, challenges and more importantly trying to uphold a balance between work, life and most importantly becoming a better muslim.

2008 proved that the Almighty truly does work in mysterious ways.
There is Hikma (wisdom) in all the good & bad we go through.

Check out the exclusive season 3 premiere of Mzanzi Rides.  Channel-O’s exclusive TV series showcasing the latest pop, hiphop & car styling culture in Southern Africa.  We have been supporting them since the early days in season 1 with various promotions & viral campaigns.

Season 3 looks to be even bigger.  The promo clip below hits the airwaves after christmas day.

Uploaded it using South Africa’s leading video sharing platform, Zoopy.com