Traverse City marketing agency takes off with second location in Heartside

The new Grand Rapids office for Flight Path Creative’s full-service marketing agency may be small, occupying just 400 square feet of office space on the fifth floor of 25 Ionia Ave., but account director and co-founder Dan Smith says for a second location, it’s the perfect fit. 

“That’s one of the benefits, one of the things we loved about Grand Rapids,” Smith says. “What it’s doing right now is making it very easy for businesses to expand here. With some of these groups like CWD (Real Estate) and some others that are rehabbing some of these buildings, they're making it very easy to make that decision because it's relatively low cost to get in and get going."

He says Flight Path Creative has first right of refusal on three other office spaces that would allow for a 1,000-square-foot expansion as they grow the company's Grand Rapids operations.

Smith founded Flight Path Creative alongside Creative Director Aaron Swanker in 2000, tailoring the company from the start to take a more comprehensive, hybrid approach to the branding, marketing strategy, website design & development, advertising, and logo design services they offer. 

They rely on both traditional and new, interactive strategies for building a client’s brand because being able to do a little bit of everything, Smith says, is how they’ve been able to land accounts like Neurocore and The Stow Company, which both operate under the Grand Rapids-based Windquest Group. 

“You have to have all of those skill sets available because we know that as a company you can't just do web or traditional media, you need to have a combination in order to be very effective, so we wanted to make sure that we could always offer both,” he says. “We were really fortunate because there are some really solid developers and interactive designers on the team.” 

Including Smith and Swanker, Flight Path Creative’s team is 14 strong. He says as the company begins to find its footing in Grand Rapids, they’re going to start out small, but have intentions to grow into both a larger space and a bigger staff, adding that he and Swanker expect Grand Rapids to be “a good pool of resource for hiring new talent.” 

“One our developers is going to be down there in a very short term and Aaron and I will spend time down there back and forth, but the intention is that over the course of time, we’ll really staff up that location,” he says. “But, we're going to do it with the right resources. We're not just going to open the door and start bringing people in, it's got to happen over time.”

Written by Anya Zentmeyer 
Images courtesy of Flight Path Creative