Company History

Elusive Concepts started as a simple web development consulting company, offering design and development services to individuals and small businesses. We've grown a lot over the years, adding various skills and talent to our roster, but at our heart we've always been the same. We love technology and writing code, it's in our blood and always will be.

Company Origins

The company was originally formed in 1999 under the name Crystalforge Web Services in New York, NY. The idea behind the name was that we were forging digital creations like blacksmiths of old, creating beautiful but utilitarian works. That idea has always remained, and we like to think of the work we create as a form of utilitarian artwork, much like ornate ironwork.

In addition to building sites for small businesses, we also worked with some high-end clients such as the WNBA, CNN, and Morgan Stanley. We had opportunities to work on small sites that were a single page and huge layered sites and web applications with thousands of pages.

We worked with big agencies and small, seeing how they worked (and overworked their staff) and how they monetized (and overbilled their clients). We learned to be better. We adapted, evolved, and absorbed the things that worked and rejected the things that didn't.

We became specialists in problem solving and finding unique solutions.

A New Name, A New Outlook

In 2011, we reformed the company as Elusive Concepts, LLC. We chose this name because we wanted to keep our company name from locking us down and because we wanted to reflect our desire and ability to solve difficult challenges. We wanted to focus our work on unique projects that stymied our clients, or those they didn't even know were possible. We did a lot of R&D-type projects and a great deal of troubleshooting for our clients, so the name made a lot of sense.

We continued to learn, to grow, and to seek out new challenges. We developed for desktop and mobile, we created content specifically for iPads, and we dipped our feet into mobile app development. We embraced Web 2.0, mobile-first, responsive development, and HTML 5.

We stayed at the forefront as technology changed, relishing new abilities and opportunities.

Where We Are Today

These days, we still like the name. We focus on producing high-end, expertly crafted work for our clients. We still have that artisan's view of our work and look for projects others say are impossible or too complex. We even started branching into emerging technologies like 3D printing, laser cutting, and artificial intelligence.

We'll continue to grow, to adapt, and to devour new technologies as they appear. The thought of remaining stagnant is abhorrent to us. We respect what we could do yesterday and are excited about what we can do today.

We can only imagine what we'll be able to do tomorrow.

Bringing Back the Past

We also recently resurrected the Crystalforge brand for another project: Crystal Forge Games, a digital resource and online hobby shop for tabletop gaming. You should check it out. We're proud of the site and thrilled that the original company name can live on with a new project.