360 Photo & Design
Why did we make this change?
Back in 2012, when we started working for ourselves (you can read more about our history in our interview with Subkit), we made our living mostly shooting Google Maps Virtual Tours. For more than a decade, our main clients were typically small businesses and hotels. We traveled all over the Midwest and produced hundreds and hundreds of 360 tours.
When the pandemic hit in 2020, those businesses were dramatically affected, and as a result their marketing budgets (our source of income) dried up. As we licked our wounds, we felt we had some choices to make. Either wait things out and hope things would get back to business as usual, or pivot to something else.
We opted to do both. As our clients marketing budgets returned, we would be there for those who still needed virtual tours under our brand 360 Photo & Design. But at the same time, we would start something new.
We decided to start a new brand that specialized in a different echelon of clientele. Clients who would demand the highest-quality images we could produce. So after spending almost two years investing in new equipment and learning new techniques, we were finally ready to go in January 2022. That month, we launched 517 Visuals.
We now feel that the time is right to consolidate. We will always be grateful to the clients who support us under our 360 brand. We are still here for them, but virtual tours aren’t our focus anymore, and having a name like 360 Photo & Design doesn’t make a lot of sense anymore.
517 Visuals has had tremendous growth, and we are having a blast working in the AEC industry. We’re not sure if this was a unique way of doing things or not, but it seems to be working out so far.
It was definitely tricky maintaining two brands and trying to explain the difference to new clients. Now this consolidation will help us further focus our attention and move us forward.
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