EDITMATE UPDATE

EditMate had it's 1st birthday in January.

I use that date loosely because when we "launched" (with a post on Facebook) I didn't know that January isn't the best time to launch a business in New Zealand.

In the USA, January is a time where everyone gets back to work after Christmas vacation. Employees power walk back into the office on January 2nd, fresh from the holiday, motivated with resolutions and new year goals. 

In New Zealand, January is the smack dab in the middle of the summer... therefore Kiwis are stacking up their Christmas days off with their vacation days off (4+ weeks, which as an American is enviable but as a new business owner was infuriating) and everyone is still at their bach, sunburned on the beach, not looking at their email and not scheduling meetings with a new company that wants to talk to them about "user generated video". No one wants to think about that until at least after Valentine's Day. And so, January 2016 was a quiet month. Things really got going in February. 

Nonetheless, EditMate's birthday is in January!

And since then, we've gained clients in 3 markets (New Zealand, Australia and the USA) and edited over 160 videos for 45 brands. Our website has changed (from where it started) and things have evolved. It's been a good year.

For a bit of a recap, here are a few of my favorite recent projects:

More on EditMate's Video Channel too. 

INTRODUCING: EDITMATE

I'll be back to posting on the regular soon BUT I wanted to tell you that there's been a good reason for the recent radio silence: the launching of EditMate.

The REAL reason why I went to Bali (besides sunshine) was to be able to hunker down and live cheap while Scott and I built an online video editing + post-production service. With his online marketing experience and my video production background, we came up with the concept for EditMate having seen firsthand that growing brands (start-ups, small businesses) have more and more of a need for web and social video but don't have the budgets to hire a traditional production company. That's where EditMate comes in. (You can read the long winded version here.)

In between surfing and eating fried rice we spent 3 months figuring out the workflow, designing the branding, building the website, attempting to translate emails in Japanese from the company that owns editmate.COM (we're settling for the .co in the meantime) and learning lots of other less fun things like SEO, short code and what a dedicated server is. And of course, I edited some videos. 

Bali: Because if you need to stare at computer screen most days you might as well be somewhere that you'll be served dragonfruit chia seed pudding for breakfast...

...and have this as your view during your commute home. All while living on about $1K a month.  

We've officially launched in beta mode here in New Zealand (I'm in New Zealand now! I was also in Australia but more on that later!).  It's an online company, so of course, we can accept a project from anywhere in the world and our Editors are located all over the globe but we're starting to market on the ground here in NZ to test the market. I'm excited. And it's summer here, so that's a plus. 

Check out editmate.co if you're into video or just want to learn how to shoot better video on your phone, DSLR or GoPro. Any spreading of the word will be enormously appreciated. And as it's 2016 (Happy New Year!) we'd adore any likes/follows on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram too. 

I hope your 2016 is off to a marvelous start and expect photos of the rest of Bali, Australia and New Zealand soon. Also thank you (really and truly) for reading my tiny corner of this massive internet.