Earlier this month, two creative services firms – Gravitate Design Studio and Mind Lightning – became one. Although officially Gravitate acquired Mind Lightning, Gravitate owner Michael Parker referred the melding of the two companies as a “marriage.”
Marc Neidlinger, former owner of Mind Lightning and now branding creative director at Gravitate, said that the two firms’ employees were “like-minded creative professionals with a real passion for helping people communicate well.”
Gravitate was founded in 1999 right here in Vancouver, and focuses on interactive web design and web services such as search engine optimization and search engine marketing. Mind Lighting, also a home-grown business founded in the early 2000s, focuses on branding, including logo creation and print services. By combining, according to Parker, they can now offer clients a “full suite of services” from logo creation and branding to “taking in [business] online.”
Neidlinger and Parker have been friends for several years, and Neidlinger said he and Parker had been discussing how they might work together for about a year and a half. Those plans came to fruition around the first of February when Mind Lightning employees officially became Gravitate employees and moved from the historic Heritage building on 6th and Main to Gravitate’s equally historic and spacious Koplan building on Evergreen and Washington in downtown Vancouver.
Stating a “desire to be here for a while,” Parker said Gravitate bought the building last fall, and currently occupies 11,000 square feet upstairs – plenty of space for Gravitate’s 22 employees, a couple of new hires and Mind Lightning’s staff of five. The approximate 9,000 square feet of space downstairs is currently empty, but Parker said at least ten entities have recently approached him about leasing the space.
“Something interesting is going to happen soon,” he noted.
In addition to continued growth – Parker said he was still looking to hire several people including designers, project managers, and marketing experts – Gravitate plans to expand their local client base and “get more community focused.”
Parker said his firm had recently gotten involved with the Columbia River Economic Development Council’s PubTalk series, and he has plans to use some of his building’s space as an incubator for small software and other high-tech startups that need web services. In return for providing those services, and possibly some back-end business support, Gravitate would receive an “equity stake” in the business.
Gravitate has an impressive client list that includes the American Lung Association and the World Bank, as well as regional health care provider, Providence.
Neidlinger said that with the additional expertise he and his staff bring to the table, Gravitate is poised to become a “strategic partner” with other Clark County businesses.
“We wanted Clark County businesses to have access to creative resources like they’ve never had,” said Neidlinger.
