Meet Drew Melton of Closer&Closer

Today we’d like to introduce you to Drew Melton.

Drew, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
After 10 years of working as a freelance designer and illustrator, I completely burned out physically and emotionally. Even though I had achieved a great deal of success, I started to realize that I didn’t enjoy making artwork. What I actually enjoyed was everything leading up to the artwork. Finding clients, pricing projects, negotiating and building relationships with my clients gave me a lot of joy.

In the fall of 2016, my wife and I moved to New Orleans. In January of 2017, I started Closer&Closer. The name was inspired by the idea that the closer we get together, the better we all do. My goal was (and is) to build a company that brings people together to accomplish things they could never do on their own. Over the course of 2017, I made a million mistakes and changed directions a dozen times.

For a while, I thought I was building a design studio, then a Creative Agency but eventually I decided that this was going to be an artist representation agency in July of 2017. From that point until now we have built a roster of 22 illustrators, animators, and designers from all over the world. We’ve worked with clients such as Lollapalooza, Hallmark, Pepsi, Samsung, and many others. It’s been an incredible journey, to say the least.

Has it been a smooth road?
The biggest struggle I encountered was finding clients at first. I thought that putting together a killer portfolio of artist work would be enough to attract clients. It’s a classic mistake to think that “if you build it they will come.” The reality is that people are busy and they already have relationships with artists they like to work with. Getting them to work with a new agency like ours means taking a risk — and most people hate taking risks. Especially with a new agency with no track record.

The other issue was finding the best artists who weren’t represented already or who wanted representation. I kept finding incredible artists that I wanted to bring on board only to discover they already had an agent. Many artists just don’t see the point in having an agent. This forced me to learn everything I could about their objections and focus on creating so much value for them that they would quickly self-select as a good fit or not a good fit for us.

We’d love to hear more about your business.
I am most proud of how we have been able to help some of our artists double or triple their revenue from freelance since joining Closer&Closer. I am also so proud of the relationships I have been able to build through this work.

Nothing makes me happier than feeling like my ability to find and land clients has contributed to someone else’s well-being. We’ve seen people pay off debt, achieve financial and personal goals and just feel like they can actually make it as a freelancer.

We specialize in finding the best creative talent from around the globe, marketing their work, managing projects, managing contracts, invoices and payment collection. We basically handle all of the parts of the process that an artist doesn’t like so they can focus on doing their best work.

What sets us apart from other agencies is that we provide project management services on every project to make sure it goes smoothly. I am not sure if other agencies do this, but I feel like its special considering that very few of our clients have seen this level of management service from a representation agency.

Is our city a good place to do what you do?
We moved back from New Orleans in January of 2018 to be in LA so that I could be closer to the clients I was building relationships with. However, I would say that New York is a much easier place to get a meeting than LA. I still find it very difficult to build solid relationships here. I’m not sure if it’s because of the sprawling geography or some other factor that I am not paying attention to.

In New York, you can set up 6 meetings in a day because people are ok with a quick 20-minute drop in and you can get to your next meeting in less than 20 minutes. In LA it usually takes 45 minutes to an hour to get somewhere, and people are less available for the meetings.

I think the city could improve by providing better public transportation or encouraging agencies to cluster together a bit more to make it easier to visit them quickly.

Contact Info:

• Address: 1751 Colorado Blvd, #312, Los Angeles, CA 90041
• Website: www.closerandcloser.co
• Phone: +1.323.426.4409
• Email: [email protected]

Image Credit:
Jill Devries, Andreea Robescu, Carmi Grau, Dave Coleman, Molly Egan, Eugenia Mello

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