It’s hard to believe but Left Coast Marketing & Design is celebrating it’s 10 year anniversary this month! It seems like yesterday that we launched our first client website selling imported wine online and producing photography and other digital media to support the sales effort. Does anyone remember what was happening in March of 2008? Well things weren’t exactly bright and rosy as our economy was on the brink of disaster, but we had no idea that the worst was yet to come. A great recession, housing crisis, and a global market meltdown later…we finally made it through the gauntlet. To say the least it has been a wild ride as a small business here on the Left Coast with lots of peaks and valleys…but I am happy to say we are here to stay.

My wife and business partner Stacey is solely responsible for our company being what it is today…without a doubt in her mind she believed that if we put all of our energy into our business and our clients we would make it a HUGE success! Of course, success can be measured in many ways but I always bring it back to our clients…several of which have been with us since we launch back in 2008. We have worked with over 100 clients since 2008 providing creative services to support food and beverage brand & product marketing as well as hospitality, lodging and real estate. We share in our client’s success stories which never gets old as every day is a new day with a new challenge. I think what Stacey and I are most proud of is the talented group of creative people that represent the Left Coast family and the culture that our company has today. We look forward to seeing what the next 10 years bring…

We are not big fans of wordy BLOG posts but for this exercise we wanted to document the timeline of our company’s inception (as well as parts of the prequel) for the very first time. We hope our customers and future customers enjoy reading about the journey…

  • The Prequel Part I -> 2006: Dan co-founded a company called Artisan Media which was a leader in the video marketing space for the food & beverage industry. With co-founder David Elkins they produced documentary style videos with winemakers and culinary professionals broadcasting to a video streaming platform that was gaining quite a bit of attention called YouTube. While videos were so much FUN to make the gigs were few and far between so to make a few extra bucks they starting a photography services called Bottle Shots. LOVE WHAT YOU DO.

  • The Prequel Part II -> 2007: After acquiring 100% ownership of Artisan Media (which in today’s dollars could hardly basically afford you a MacBook Pro) Dan launched a wine industry digital asset management platform called Wine Media Kit. With all of this video and photography we were producing we needed a better way to store and access the files in the global marketplace. Again, we were on to something very big…until a small company called DropBox came up with a pretty darn good solution of their own. PROJECT MANAGEMENT IS IN OUR DNA.

  • The Beginning -> 2008: Left Coast Marketing & Design was founded in March of 2008 by Dan and Stacey Chapin. Anyone who knows us won’t be surprised to learn that it was the only name we could agree upon. Our original business model established to provide direct marketing support for an import wine brand -> specifically a dry pomegranate wine from Israel called Rimon Wines. When our client/partner decided to abandon the DTC sales operation we inherited a website and inventory to sell. Of course, this came with a new requirement that we purchase purchase the wine from our customer as a distributor a resell it as a retailer. Let me tell you that sales were great and marketing wine online at that time was a piece of cake! If we only knew what we were getting into…unfortunately we ran out of “pay dirt” for Left Coast Marketing & Design when our business partner stopped importing the wonderful Rimon Wines merged the two companies under LMC umbrella to provide Digital Marketing and media production services. It was at this time we also decided to focus more on creative services and less on software programing. CUSTOMER SERVICE IS OUR #1 SERVICE.

  • The Big Break -> 2012: After bidding on several large projects to help us take the leap…we landed facebook wine marketplace account working with Wine Direct and building a photography studio inside of the Wine Direct warehouse which was originally going to house the Amazon wine marketplace digital media production. In less than 6 months we shot over 1,000 product images  which allowed us to quit our day jobs and focus 100% on our fledgling creative business. There are several mantras that we hold dear at Left Coast Marketing & Design which will be the subject of another BLOG…but back in 2012 we started to develop our CORE VALUES that we hold dear today. LIFE + WORK = BALANCE.

  • Expansion Part I -> 2013: Many of our clients were in need of help to support their sales & marketing initiates beyond our digital media production services. After referring enough of them to other design agencies we decided that it was time to make fulfill our clients needs by expanding our superpowers. We launched print design and custom publishing services. This has been the best decision we made although it was also the first step in taking our business to the next level. CUSTOMER SERVICE IS OUR #1 SERVICE.

  • Diversification -> 2015: As our company grew we saw value in expanding to other industries to bring our ideas and best practices to other small businesses while staying 1-degree of separation from the wine biz. Expanding from the wine industry we found ourselves gravitating to specialty food and beverage, hospitality, retail, and even real estate. What we did not expect is that our knowledge based also expanded and we brought ideas and best practices back to our wine industry clients. It is this diversification coupled with deep experience in knowledge within the wine industry niche that forged the creative superpowers that we have today. LOVE WHO YOU WORK WITH.

  • Expansion Part II -> 2016: Following our Core Value #1 that CUSTOMER SERVICE IS OUR #1 SERVICE we finally added Website Design & Development to our list of service offerings in order to solidify our holistic marketing and creative service value proposition. This new offering fit into our company culture so naturally it seemed to be the piece we were missing all along. And the best part…we welcomed Tony Immordino from Wine Minded Design and his right hand man Stan Tausan into the Left Coast team! CUSTOMER SERVICE IS OUR #1 SERVICE.

  • Onward and Upward -> 2017 through to Today: Our team started to grow and our core team members began to spread their wings! Left Coast Marketing & Design’s veteran graphic designer Chelsea Bond was promoted to Lead Designer for the print design portfolio. Sarah Seabourne, SSU graduate, has spearheaded the new chapter of Digital Marketing Services. Jon Strachan our newest member, is project manager and quarterback when it comes to organization and getting the job done. He also has a design background which lens itself well to understand the creative process and our clients needs. Everyone has a different set of superpowers so I will save that for another BLOG post…but in closing we just want to say THANK YOU to all of our clients, many of whom are still with us since the early days, and we are so grateful for the opportunities we have been blessed with the the amazing team that carries the Left Coast Marketing & Design flag today. LIFE + WORK = BALANCE.

  • OK…that’s it. Don’t forget to RSVP to our 10 year Anniversary party and we hope to see you there!!