Hello, we are Nicole and Austin Barkis, and we are so glad you’re here! We are the husband and wife team behind this creative agency. While we are the main faces behind this company, we have a team of 6 primary team members that assist us in maintaining all our contracts. The majority of which work telecommute from the LA and SF areas. Thanks to our expansive industry experience, we also partner with a vast team of trusted professionals on a regular basis (all state-side) which allow our agency to scale depending on your project’s specific needs.
A little bit about us personally… we were both born and raised in Olympia, Washington, we met through work as we were both starting our first businesses nearly 10 years ago. We’ve been attached at the hip ever since. Our first “big break” took us to Southern California to work on design & photography within the film industry. As many of you may know, films often fall through in Hollywood, and we decided to start our first creative firm. We learned a lot in those early years, in the fast-paced business world that is Los Angeles.
After a few years, we realized we didn’t want to settle down in Southern California, and decided to sell all our belongings, attach a teardrop trailer to our Mini Cooper, and travel the USA to find our new home. The year we spent on the road was one of our favorite adventures, and what brought us to the beautiful central coast of Monterey Bay – quite possibly the most beautiful stretch of coastline in the world. We are so thankful to have our roots here, but we are incredibly fortunate to our customers that provide us work across the globe.
From the very beginning of our relationship, travel has been an integral part. We have explored 13 states and 6 countries together so far, with quite a few left on our list. Traveling allows us the opportunity to see the world differently, refill our creative minds and bring that energy and global insight into everything we do.
We struggle to define exactly what we are sometimes, because we do so many things for a lot of different people and industries. Ultimately, we settled on Boutique Creative Agency as we most closely consider ourselves to be a nimble, creative team with a penchant for storytelling across a wide variety of mediums & platforms, and we operate strongly off our core values.
boutique creative agency
[bo͞oˈtēk krēˈādiv ˈājənsē ] noun
a business or establishment that is small and sophisticated that offers a combination of creative, strategy, design, technology and advertising services to clients, it is creative or expert lead, it’s made up primarily of creative professionals, and it’s often strongly defined by values.
We create one of a kind experiences through photography, brand development, website design, consultation, and more. The easy way to explain it is that we tell our clients stories, and we do it really well. We’ve photographed over 100 weddings, traveled the world and proudly worked with global brand names such as Amazon, Alaska Airlines, Starbucks, Band-Aid, and PepsiCo. We have designed and consulted across many industries, and proudly represent some of the most prestigious names throughout the Monterey Bay and beyond.
We get very invested in our client’s goals, so we’ve had to ensure our team is efficient, specialized, and proudly 100% USA based (one of our clients were being outsourced offshore and didn’t know it, we don’t think that’s cool). When a project is outside our team’s capabilities, we have a well-established network to support it’s needs. We can connect you with them directly, or we can manage the project for you – It’s up to you. That’s all part of our mission.
We are vertically integrated love working within new industries that continually challenge us. We’ve named products and ventures, managed national franchise expansions, grown businesses both brick & mortar, and online from local to national. We’ve branded, consulted, created content for and marketed alongside global brand names. We’ve designed apps, and managed projects of nearly all scope sizes. We absolutely love what we do – Whether your business is struggling and needs help, or it’s good and you want to make it great. We can either help you or point you in the right direction.
If you or your business have a story to tell, we’d love to be a part of it; please give us a call 831-920-2141.