Credential
Start the UX Design Process: Empathize, Define, and Ideate
Course certificate · authorized by Google, offered through Coursera · May 19, 2026
Credential ID Z8DVO44DBUQ1
Studio · Kalamazoo, MI
A one-person web studio in Kalamazoo.
Element Web Company designs and builds custom websites, Shopify stores and web applications by hand — for businesses across Southwest Michigan and for clients around the country.
Sahil Sandhu
Founder & Lead Developer
- Based in
- Kalamazoo, Michigan, born and raised
- Studying
- Cybersecurity at Western Michigan University
- Alongside
- Computer science coursework
- Does
- Scoping, design, code and launch
48h
To a written proposal: timeline, approach and a fixed price.
The studio Kalamazoo, MI
Small on purpose.
Element Web Company was founded by Sahil Sandhu and runs as a small, hands-on studio. That is a deliberate choice rather than a stage we are trying to grow out of. Work does not get handed down a chain from a salesperson to an account manager to whoever happens to be free that week — the person who scopes your project is the person who designs and builds it.
Nothing here starts from a purchased theme or a drag-and-drop builder. Sites are written in code, which is slower to begin and considerably better to live with. Pages load fast on a phone on cell service, layouts do exactly what they are told, and there is no stack of plugins quietly breaking each other during an update.
The range of work is wider than a typical web shop because the underlying skill is the same one. A restaurant ordering flow, a venue booking system with an admin dashboard behind it, a township community site, a Shopify store and a 3D product experience are all software problems wearing different clothes. Solve the problem properly and the surface it lives on stops mattering.
The thesis Sahil Sandhu
A website has a job.It either does it, or it does not.
Founder No handoffs
Who you’ll work with.
Talk to Sahil directly
No account manager in between. Replies within one business day.
(269) 929-6895 sahil@elementwebco.comSahil Sandhu was born and raised in Kalamazoo. He is studying cybersecurity at Western Michigan University and has taken computer science coursework alongside the degree — the security side teaches you how systems get broken into, the CS side how they get built, and both end up in everything shipped here.
The interest started early and never really turned off. Long before it was a business it was taking things apart to see how they worked, and that is still the shape of the job: a booking system, a checkout flow and a 3D product viewer are the same curiosity pointed at different problems.
Working alongside his father’s businesses is where the commercial half came from. Being close to the day-to-day of a small business — the phone calls, the quiet weeks, the things that actually bring customers through the door — teaches you quickly that a website is not a brochure. It has a job, and it either does it or it does not.
He does the work himself: scoping, design, front end, back end and launch. Clients talk to him directly rather than through an account manager, which is the main reason projects move at the speed they do. There is no round trip between the person who understands the business and the person writing the code.
The journey 05 stops
How this got here
- Kalamazoo
Born and raised here
Not a studio that opened an office in Kalamazoo — one run by someone from it. Knowing how business actually gets done in Southwest Michigan is not research, it is just background.
- Curiosity
Taking things apart
The interest in technology started long before it was work. Understanding how something functions well enough to rebuild it is the same instinct that now goes into a booking system or a checkout flow.
- Family business
Learning what a website is for
Working alongside his father’s businesses meant seeing the quiet weeks and the phone that does or does not ring. A site is not a brochure; it has a job, and the difference shows up in revenue.
- WMU
Cybersecurity, plus the computer science
Studying cybersecurity at Western Michigan University, with computer science coursework taken alongside the degree. Security teaches how systems get broken into; CS teaches how they get built. Both end up in the work.
- Element
The studio
Element Web Company is the result: design, front end, back end and launch handled by one person who understands the business and writes the code, with no handoff in between.
Where Southwest Michigan
Based in Kalamazoo, building well beyond it
The studio is in Kalamazoo, and for local clients that matters more than a mailing address usually does. Meeting at your restaurant, shop or office in Kalamazoo, Portage or Battle Creek is straightforward, and walking a space in person is still the fastest way to understand what its website has to show.
Being here also means knowing what the searching looks like. A contractor in Portage and a venue downtown compete in a small, specific market where showing up in map results and looking like an established business does most of the work. That is a different problem from national SEO, and it gets treated as one rather than run through the same checklist.
Not all of it is local. Some of the work is with clients elsewhere in the country who never needed to meet in person, and those projects run entirely over calls and shared previews. Southwest Michigan is where the studio is, not a limit on who it builds for.
Meet in person
- Kalamazoo
- Portage
- Battle Creek
- Anywhere by call
Principles 04 rules
How the work gets made
- Principle
You own what you paid for
The domain stays in your name, hosting sits on an account you control, and the code is yours. Nothing is held back as leverage for a maintenance contract. If you ever want another developer to take it over, they get the full codebase and can pick it up.
- Principle
Built by hand, not assembled
No purchased themes, no page builders, no plugin stacks. Every page is written in code for the business it belongs to. It costs more time up front and it removes the ceiling a template puts on how fast, how accessible and how distinctive a site is allowed to be.
- Principle
Speed is part of the design
Most visitors arrive on a phone, often on cell service rather than office wifi. A page that takes four seconds to appear has already lost people who would have called. Load time is treated as a design constraint from the first layout, not an optimization pass after launch.
- Principle
Plain answers and a fixed number
You get a scoping conversation, then a fixed project price to approve before any work starts. Timelines are given as honest ranges, because a build depends partly on how quickly photos and approvals come back. Nobody here will promise you a Google ranking or a conversion rate — those are not anyone’s to promise.
Capabilities 08 services
The work itself
Industries 08 sectors
Industries we build for
Sectors the studio has built for, launched in, or currently looks after. The common thread is a business whose customers decide online — where the site has to show the room, the menu, the property or the product well enough that someone gets in touch.
- Restaurants and food service
- Event venues and hospitality
- Entertainment, DJs and live events
- Real estate and property development
- Townships and community organizations
- Ecommerce and consumer brands
- Nightlife and social platforms
- Startups and early-stage software
What we build with: Next.js, React, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, Three.js, GSAP, Framer Motion, Node.js, Neon Postgres, Shopify, Liquid, Vercel.
Based in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Reach the studio at sahil@elementwebco.com or through the contact page.
Tell us what you are building.
You will hear back within one business day, with a written proposal — timeline, approach and a fixed price — inside 48 hours.