Clay Creative House : From circle of friends to be a professional creative team
Clay adalah sebuah creative house yang didirikan pada bulan Mei 2020, Mencakup branding, social media management, video/photo production, product design, dan environmental & architectural design. Setelah menginjak umur satu tahun dan merasakan naik turunnya membesarkan bisnis di tengah pandemi, Clay berharap untuk menjadi katalis dalam industri kreatif dengan cara mengimplementasikan metode-metode “unorthodox” di saat menyelesaikan suatu proyek.
Pada episode Bizgaze ke-4 ini kami berkesempatan untuk berbincang mendalam dengan Jelita, salah satu tim Clay Creative House tentang bagaimana mereka berkembang dalam bidang bisnis industri kreatif.
Simak obrolan kami berikut ini:
Tell us everything about your studio. How it started ? What do y’all do ? What is your specialty?
We initially started as a group of friends uncertain of what to do with the abundance of time given at the arrival of the pandemic. Upon numerous ideas on how to utilize our multidisciplinary backgrounds, we were met with an opportunity to work with our first client, and that’s where our intentions in establishing a creative house became a greater ambition.
We then adjusted to recruit the appropriate members as complementary counterparts of our founding team. We started out from a makeshift office we put together in one of our co-founder’s storage rooms. Today our current office is located in Panglima Polim of South Jakarta. Being a team consisting of graphic designers, architects, photographers and marketing strategists, we mainly specialize in brand development, creative direction, and campaign activations.
However, we also provide other services within separate divisions under Clay which include: ‘Clap’, our video/photo production division, ‘Claw’, our website development division, and ‘Car’, our architectural design division.
Please let us know , who are the people behind the studios ?
Running for a year now, Clay has grown into a team of 12 people in total with our core members being Abbyrawa, Affan, Arif, Ghefaza, Krishna, Jelita and Rafi. In summary, the people behind Clay are individuals who share the same creative values but non-similar creative approaches.
“we are a team of innovative, non-conventional problem solvers.”
On another note, we are a laidback group of friends attempting to broaden the path to where we individually want to stand within the creative industry and luckily, working together has manifested into opportunities and resources for personal development which ultimately has given us the chance to do exactly that.
You have a fantastic team behind your studios, tell us more about the work culture and how you build a culture of teamwork .
Our company grew from a circle friends and we treasure each relationship between our team members. Often times, friendship-based businesses are deemed a liability, but we are lucky enough to be a team of cooperative & communicative members where we respect each individual’s principles and value everyone’s opinion. Sticking to these values and applying them as our method of teamwork is what made us grow into better friends as well as better business partners
As a creative studio, how you build a strong network/connection?
Typically, we expand our network organically through mutual connections as we enjoy our fair share of socializing. Outside of attending external gatherings, every now and then we generate activations in the form of collaborative events or solo events, such as our recurring “Recess”, where we create the opportunity for us and other creatives to interact and form networks.
Clay is grew from a circle of friends, is it a good idea working with circle of friends ?
“Growing something together”
In our case, we have been very lucky to work together as friends. In the time we’ve worked together our relationship with each other has only become stronger. Pursuing the same mission of growing something together and seeing that effort translate into milestones has really strengthened our bond and mutual respect as business partners and friends.
We know Clay has a couple services divisions, How do you guys work cross-functionally with each other?
Upon executing a project, we develop a timeline to map out the needed man-power within the timeframe of a single project and discuss our plan of action upon every project initiation to establish a clear work flow.
What’s your creative process ?
“Having a team of people with different skills and backgrounds, we value each person’s process in attaining creative solutions.”
Giving each person the time and space to explore as a creative before merging and refining our ideas together has given us the possibility to maximize our potential in developing and filtering our ideas. Being a team is our greatest asset and we know to utilize teamwork to our advantage. Surrounded by creative people with ideas and opinions you respect makes executing projects go by more swiftly as we are continuously evaluating the quality of our work in each step of the process towards creating our final output.
How many projects you’ve done?
We’ve done approximately 70 projects throughout our 1+ year of running, excluding our architectural and web-design work.
Describe an important project you worked on.
Every project is equally important to us, however there are a few that we cherish more out of sentimental value. We did a collaboration project in Jogja last year, which was our first project outside of town. It was a very memorable experience for all of us. Travelling by car and camping out by the beach before heading to the exhibition venue is a bonding experience we hold close to our hearts.
Every studio design has the same problem, most common is about how to get client, Can you tell us how Clay can get a client, or tips and tricks?
“A lot of our clientele is generated from word of mouth.”
Its important that we are active in our community and appropriately represent our company along with its values when engaging with perpetrators in the industry. We take pride in sticking to our roots and avoid compromising our vision and taste when executing our projects. We believe staying true to your company’s ideals as its core foundation no matter how far your company grows makes it stand out among others.
Do you have any favorite studio that you look upon?
Our company is fairly new in the industry, so there are plenty of studios we look up to both locally and internationally. Flourishing out of a handful of multidisciplinary individuals, we seek drive and aspiration from L.A. based studio, PlayLab Inc, as they incorporate the similar multidisciplinary background we are familiar with and it’s inspiring to us to see a successful company of their caliber still maintain their true essence, giving newcomers like us the spirit to thrive off of our foundational fundamentals.
Are you working on some projects right now? Or planning to do some project?
Currently we are working on multiple projects, mostly surrounding F&B and retail. We are in the works of planning a collaboration project for our community that will incorporate music, entertainment and our beloved local independents artists.
What do you think about creative industry scenes in Indonesia nowadays?
In today’s current climate, it’s reasonable for everyone in the industry to be fueled by the need to survive. It is without a doubt that we are effected by today’s pandemic and time after time we are faced with the challenge of having to create a healthy balance between maintaining our ideals along with our company’s sustainability, which don’t go always go hand in hand. In addition, while the rest of the world is already running on industry 4.0, locally we have yet to fully utilize industry 4.0’s potential. However, the pandemic has accelerated our country to run on industry 5.0, without the appropriate pre-existing infrastructure.
Last, would you give some word for the studio or designer out there or whoever it’s to keep up their spirit of creating?
The first step is to recognize your style. With all the skills and assets you posses, make yourself available in the market. Remain consistent and eventually people will come to you with opportunities that will continuously awaken your creative spirit.
Thank you Clay…
