Lilac-media Web Agency – Our History

For more than 20 years we, Winfried Flieder and Christiane Schenke, have been online. Our surfing journey began in the 90s, when the Internet as a so-called "new medium" moved into companies and households.

We met through the founder of the Lhalleschen uchs-Kinos, Wolfgang Burkart, who was in an Entrepreneurship training course with Christiane. Winfried took part in another education provider's similar Entrepreneurship course. This path and the common goal of wanting to create websites for clients quickly connected both of us.

There was a spirit of upheaval and new, previously unknown professions emerged. For example the multimedia developer, to which Winfried, originally a chemist, pursued further training. He discovered his love for computers.

At the same time Christiane stood in a modern-equipped computer cabinet in Wolfen to help former chemistry workers become multimedia developers. She quickly noticed that some of the women would rather cook than pixel, although they sat in front of brand-new Macintosh computers. Not everyone found access to the new tools.

This experience was the starting gun for Christiane's work as a freelance instructor in vocational training. For several years she trained unemployed people to web designers at various educational providers. A new market enticed with the hope of placing many people into the new professions. The market, however, would fall short of expectations, as later turned out.

With lots of energy and joy the work began. Projects she herself had painted at the art school with brush and paint were now conjured by the participants using digital means, in a fraction of the time!

Note: Design rules always apply, whether with brush and paper or with mouse and Photoshop!

From the first joint web projects of the two sole proprietors, in 2002 lilac-media-GbR was formed. Lilac is, by the way, the English word for lilac.

Soon the newly founded GbR had to intensify work for clients quite unexpectedly. For the time of further training and the activity as a lecturer ended abruptly in 2004. The market had been flooded with new web designers, but far too few had found work. How good it was to have two pillars! We weathered this crisis together, now also privately as a couple.

Technologies came and went. Who still remembers Frames or Flash? What worked well for a while disappeared later, as if it had never existed. It was essential to recognize the trends of the time, to make new techniques usable and to adapt our work to the ever-changing viewing habits and technical conditions. Nothing has changed about this to this day.

The era of Content Management Systems (CMS) began. We built the first client's news module into their static websites, allowing them to publish their own news. That was the beginning of lilac-CMS.

For our own program system we started our first own web server, with the support of the Halleschen company connectline. Here all client projects are still operated to this day.

From the first homepage modules emerged the own program system, the lilac-framework and the lilac-CMS. Increasingly administrative tasks were also realized with it.

2005 the first homepage was fully realized with the lilac-CMS.

We expanded the lilac-framework in 2006 with a quotation- and an order-module – another building block for our own agency management.

2007 we had lilac® registered as its own brand with the German Patent and Trade Mark Office.

The tasks increased with the number of clients and became more complex. So in 2009 we created our own ticketing system, with which we still manage all tasks today. The ticket system is another important building block for the digitization of our business processes.

Since 2015 Oliver Steinbach has brought fresh wind into the team and the web projects as a permanent employee.

Since then we have mastered the switch to responsible, device-independent websites and the topic of data protection as important focal points.

In June 2018 Winfried Flieder left the company to take a permanent position at the newly founded online marketing agency Webfindling UG (haftungsbeschränkt). The GbR was continued as lilac-media Ch. Schenke & Partner GbR.

Since July 2019 Winfried Flieder is again a co-owner of the GbR.