A local company has done production work for Ricky Skaggs and Roberta Flack.
By ELISE McKEOWN SKOLNICK
HOWLAND — When Chip Atkins moved to the Mahoning Valley from Long Island, N.Y., he didn't plan to open his own business.
He made the move for the same reason many do: He had a job offer.
It wasn't long before Atkins realized he wasn't happy with the audio/video production work he was doing, though.
"Probably my biggest concern was, I was the artist, I wanted to do the best job," Atkins said. "[My boss] was the business guy, he wanted to have it done quickly."
To have more creative freedom, Atkins decided to start his own audio/video production company and opened the doors to Accent Media in August 2003.
"It's been very tricky to actually pull that off as a business owner," Atkins acknowledged. "Because now I see kind of where he was coming from."
It wasn't easy getting started, either. He put together a three-year business plan but couldn't find financing. The equipment involved depreciates quickly, so financing sources didn't see it as good collateral, he said.
Atkins didn't give up. Instead, he borrowed money from friends and relatives. He painted his new office himself.
Rather than hiring employees immediately, he took care of everything, putting in 16-hour days. He worked with clients by day, and by night he worked on the actual product.
Suffering first-year-in-business blues, Atkins considered giving up.
But "I had this huge debt behind me, and it wasn't like I could just go, 'Hey, sorry,' to a bank and go bankrupt," he said. "It was, 'Oh, OK, that's my grandmother who's going to kick my butt when I see her at Christmastime.'"
Getting work
A few companies began hiring Atkins to do local commercials, and then he got his big break: a chance to film and edit a companion DVD for a tribute to the late Fred Rogers, the children's television show star known as Mr. Rogers. The project earned a Grammy, bringing Accent Media national attention.
Atkins now counts Ricky Skaggs, Roberta Flack and Crystal Gayle, among others, as clients. Recent projects for the company include filming the premier video for country singer Tom Wurth and filming an exercise video in San Francisco.
Atkins sees further growth in the national market and doesn't see his distance from the hubs of video activity as a problem.
"Everybody thinks, why wouldn't you go to New York or LA to do this?" he said. "And it's quite simply because so many people do it there. Yeah, there's a lot of work, but there's a lot of competition."
This area is affordable as a base of operations, he notes, so he can be competitive in a national market.
Atkins doesn't plan to leave the local work behind, however. There's plenty of work in the Valley, he said. Cleveland, Akron and Pittsburgh offer opportunities, as well.
"My goal has always been to offer a national level of production quality to a local client," Atkins said.
The company is outgrowing its current location at 8017 E. Market St., where it employs six, said Scott Fullerton, marketing manager.
Its current 650-square-foot space houses four editing suites and a tiny sound proof booth. To allow for growth, Atkins is seeking a new building with at least 2,000 square feet