E-Reading’s Next Evolution

Auryn Technology brings children’s classics and original tales to animated life with the interactive StoriesAlive app. By Tom McLean and Mercedes Milligan.

immersed in this area, it’s that much more important to find a market you enjoy.

Focused But Viable

For example, maybe you’ve always had a soft spot for animals and want to find a niche in that category. Being the best zebra animation team may be too narrow, but being the most specialized animal animation studio you could find out virtually everything needed to know if any niche has the potential to provide adequate cash flow to achieve your business goals. If so, congratulations — you’ve found your niche.

In this particular example, you would strive to be the animal animation studio. This niche would permeate every molecule of your company’s being. When you go to presentations, you would provide animal crackers. Your busi- ness cards would be replete with animals. Your website would feel like a zoo as much as an animation studio. Your show reels would be populated with a wide variety of high quality animal animation clips. You would provide free animation to a reputable animal shelter’s marketing and advertising campaign. You would proclaim to the world with great certainty that if anyone needs animal animation, they absolutely, positively must work with you.

Stick to Your Plan

Knowing who your clients are because you are so well niched also means knowing who they are not and being unafraid to turn them away. It may be hard to stomach at first, especially during the startup phase when you may not have much business, but if you make a habit of accepting clients and projects outside your niche, it will only make you frustrated and ultimately out of business.

Perhaps most impressively, when you are well niched, “How much does it cost?” is no longer a client’s first or second question. If you are perceived as the specialty team to work with in a particular area, the right clients will ask for your services first and discuss price last. In some cases, they may happily pay your invoice without questioning or even discussing the amount.

When you specialize, you are putting your signature on everything you do. You are not sharing the pie with anybody; you are creating your own pie. When you find your niche, by definition there will be no competition. Martin Grebing is an award-winning animation director and producer who has focused his career on smaller studios and alternative markets. Today, he provides creative consulting and is the owner-operator of Funnybone Animation, a boutique studio that produces animation for a wide range of clients and industries. He can be reached at www.funnyboneanimation.com.