Kyrima Colon and Issac Hopkins are cofounders of SquishyBrick, a Hartford, CT-based creative startup.
Hartford-based brand strategy and design consultancy SquishyBrick was founded by Issac Hopkins, Creative Art Director & CEO and Kyrima Colon, Marketing Director. Innovation Destination Hartford Website Curator Nan Price learned about their experience launching a startup in Hartford and what makes their agency innovative.
NAN PRICE: Why Hartford?
ISSAC HOPKINS: Kyrima and I are both from Hartford. We took off for Washington, D.C. right after high school and we both went to the Art Institute of Washington to study video game art and design.
NAN: Did you intend to come back?
ISSAC: No, that wasn’t our intention at all. We came back following a large video game company, where I had gotten a contract to work. But the entire company disbanded and moved to London. It was a tough process for us—we had uprooted our lives and spent a lot to move back here. The position was still available in London, but we had just moved back to Hartford, and it didn’t make sense to move again.
NAN: It became a “now what?!” situation. Did that evolve into launching the business?
ISSAC: Right. We jumped into regular day jobs and we were freelancing at the same time, establishing ourselves, and building portfolio work. We had some local clients and we wanted to attack where we grew up, essentially. It wasn’t the plan. It wasn’t a negative necessarily, but the original plan was to go to D.C., make a lot of contacts, and try a different life. So, when we moved back to Connecticut the new plan became: Alright, let’s just make it work.
And, because we had been gone for a few years, we saw that the city was different. There were more companies, co-working spaces were popping up, and young entrepreneurs were everywhere.
KYRIMA COLON: When we came back to Hartford, we were still up in the air. We were getting offers from different states. But we had just gotten here and we were getting situated. I told Issac: We may as well make this a business, create one name everyone knows both of us by, and get our work out there more effectively. We had kept our work separate for years. So, in 2017 we decided to join everything and create a formal company.
NAN: What’s your differentiator?
ISSAC: The business started from our skillset, which is unique. At the time, we were among the first couple hundred people in the country who had a degree in game design.
Most people from the game industry have studied from animation or traditional artwork. With game design, you have to be able to draw, sculpt, paint—and do those things digitally, too. And you’re doing design, animation, rendering, simulations, and lighting in not only 2D but also 3D environments.
NAN: SquishyBrick isn’t a game design company, though. How are you incorporating your skills into the services you offer?
ISSAC: Using a skillset acquired from the game industry, we make visual representations of products. So, we can enable a customer or company to rapidly prototype and customize a product or package design.
Typically, if an entrepreneur has a product to bring to market, they make some rough designs or prototypes of their design, then they need to acquire funding to take it to the next level. They usually need an engineer to build a working 3D model or create details for a manufacturer. That takes a long time and it’s expensive—and it’s a sticking point for a lot of entrepreneurs.
Sometimes all that effort is put in before they’ve even figured out whether the market wants their product. That’s a big problem. Imagine spending all that time, effort, and money to get an engineer to make your product only to find out the market doesn’t want or need it.
SquishyBrick enables people to make a photorealistic, customizable representation of their product they can put out to prospective customers. They can visualize it and do real-time testing to see if there’s a space for their product in the market without having to spend all that extra money and time to manufacture it.
They can also send the same designs we’ve created to manufacturers to find out if the product can be manufactured. From there, they can approach investors and try to get funding for the next step in their initiative. And people typically need investment to get to that next step. But, if they’re bogged down and barely have any money for the initial concept, they can get stuck.
NAN: Aside from startups and entrepreneurs, who is your target clientele?
ISSAC: Companies looking to launch products and develop their brands. One of our target industries is beverage companies. Connecticut has a lot of brewing companies trying to market new beers and they need to differentiate their products from everyone else’s. The best way to do that is by marketing through visual concepts. Another target industry is tech companies that have hard-to-describe products, like a virtual private network.
We can really benefit small- to medium-sized companies that want to grow and move forward but don’t necessarily have the budget to work with a large marketing company. More people need to realize marketing is the key. Especially if your product is already in place. That’s where we can help. We can create visuals that help smaller companies compete with large-scale companies. We’re leveling the playing field for them.
NAN: What’s been the biggest startup challenge?
KYRIMA: Building consistent clientele. And having our clients understand that this may be something they may not know they need. What we can provide is new, it’s great, and it can simplify things. It’s been challenging helping prospective clients see the impact our work can have.
NAN: Have you engaged with local startup resources?
ISSAC: We’ve attended a few Hartford Young Professionals and Entrepreneur (HYPE) events. We’ve gone to some Upward Hartford events, too. I was working out of their space for a while.
KYRIMA: And then we found Connecticut mentor Eric Knight. He’s been the most helpful across-the-board so far. We’ll have a 30-minute meeting with him and get so much information!
ISSAC: We were pumped because a lot of the things we’ve been to have been good, but there’s not a lot of actionable material you can take away. The events are directionally right, but there aren’t any hard facts we can make use of. So far, working with Eric has given us actionable direction.
NAN: At what point did you realize you needed to work with some startup resources?
ISSAC: We’ve been very cognizant of trying to make as few mistakes as possible. So, we knew we were going to need some sort of mentorship or guidance. And we’ve also been very aware that there’s a lot we don’t know—that’s a big focus for us. We actually keep a list at our studio.
One thing we had on our list was: How to take actionable direction toward specific things. After two meetings with Eric, we crossed off a bunch of things. For example, he thinks we need to have more exposure. And we had that on our list, too. So, we have a whole marketing strategy now for 2019.
NAN: What else do you need most to move your company forward?
ISSAC: We need more clients to help us to get the word out. We need to encourage more people to see the value in better artwork, and then get those people tell other people—create word-of-mouth marketing. We have the getting-the-word-out problem.
That’s where we’re floating right now and we’re moving forward. But our biggest hurdle locally is getting people to take the leap and commit to the value of new artwork and new designs. Moving forward, we’re going to continue to put out the most interesting and captivating artwork we possibly can—because people need it.
Learn more about SquishyBrick
VISIT: www.squishybrick.com
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