"Graphic arts company Walls 360 moved from San Francisco to Las Vegas for Sin City’s arts and culture scene. If you’re doing a double-take, that’s not a misprint. Sure, Walls 360’s founders liked Southern Nevada’s lack of income tax, cheap real estate, low-cost shipping and big available workforce. But it was downtown’s monthly First Friday arts festival that really did the trick. Co-founder John Doffing read about it in an article by a tech writer who noted the growing arts scene centered on e-tailer Zappos.com, which plans to move into City Hall in 2013. “We went to First Friday and checked things out. We’re an artist-centered company, and there’s this incredible community of artists in this city that we didn’t know about,” said Doffing, who ran startups in Silicon Valley for more than 15 years before opening Walls 360 here six weeks ago. “We visited galleries and started interviewing folks, and it pushed us over the edge as far as telling us this was the place for us to go.” Walls 360 is one of about 10 businesses that relocated to or expanded in Las Vegas from July to September, the first quarter in the Nevada Development Authority’s fiscal year. That handful of companies spurred $84.1 million in capital investment in the area, a huge jump from just $3 million in the first quarter of 2009."
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"So the product is great, but how did this San Francisco startup end up in Las Vegas? The company started out in SF around 5 years ago, and initially the idea was to do everything but produce the graphics, outsourcing to print shops around the globe. They would run the website, sign licensing deals with owners of the art, coordinate production, and deal with customer service. In a similar way that Zappos got its start by drop-shipping, Walls 360 wanted to avoid the hassle and capital intensity of owning your own machines. (Tech guys really don’t want to get their hands dirty with handling physical product.) It was a great idea in theory, but outsourcing production of the product caused more problems and they concluded they needed to control the process end to end so they could maintain their high end reputation. That meant a significant capital cost, and in the San Francisco bay area it just didn’t make sense financially. So John and Tavia looked at locations all over the US, and decided that Las Vegas was the optimal city…"
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"Walls360 is a cool startup in Las Vegas that makes high-quality (but affordable) wall art. They’ve got the license to some great properties, like Star Trek, Plants vs. Zombies and a host of children’s books, and now they are offering nearly all of the icon artwork produced by famed designer Susan Kare. The company scored some work with Zazzle, but they actually have a higher purpose than just printing other people’s stuff. If you think these are merely wall stickers, I think it’s important to explain how committed to art the team really is. The team itself is made up of artists, for example. Here’s a bit of background…Vulcan, the on-demand production lead is a legendary aerosol artist who created the Graffiti Hall of Fame in Harlem in the ’80s. Chris (Levy), director of creative services, co-founded one of the first on-demand wall graphics companies in the world while an undergraduate at UNLV…The founders, John Doffing and Tavia Campbell, have 20 years of digital imaging experience. CEO John even ran afoul of App Store guidelines early on in the store’s history. So Walls360 is made up of artists and geeks, and I was more than impressed with their on-demand factory for printing these awesome wall art pieces."
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"Co-founders Tavia Campbell and John Doffing have actually been at this for a few years, previously working out of San Francisco and then Philadelphia, but when they decided last year to stop outsourcing and start printing their own products, they had to make a new business model and find a new home. Las Vegas has proven to be a great decision, Campbell told me, because the company’s only real costs now are administrative, ink and fabric — rent in the industrial sector (its neighbor is a crankshaft repair shop) is practically a non-factor — and the city actually has a great mix of artists and printing professionals that honed their skills working on projects for casinos and trade shows. Right now, Walls 360 makes most of its money from partnerships like those with EA around its video games, from contract printing jobs for conventions and other events, and from individual sales of its custom prints. However, because individual orders are printed on demand, Campbell said the plan is to let customers upload their own images and have Walls 360 print them. She said Walls 360 is also thinking about leveraging cheap storefront space in downtown Las Vegas to open its own store, possibly doubling as a gallery where artists could display and sell their work as Walls 360 prints."
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"As long term bay area residents, Las Vegas has taken some getting used to, but the booming arts community and the recent entrepreneurial regeneration of Downtown led by Tony Hsieh is showing them that maybe Las Vegas has more in common with San Francisco than they originally thought. The company employs around 10 people right now, but expansion is likely as they expand into new markets like home décor and further exploit the opportunities serving businesses. Vegas hosts around 20,000 conferences every year, so that’s a lot of opportunities for company logos!"
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"The plan was to take graphics orders on a website and outsource printing. But Doffing and Campbell found they needed to provide the products, shipping and customer service in order to be successful. In its glorified garage near Tropicana Avenue and Arville Street, the company designs, prints, cuts and ships wall graphics. Walls 360 produces art that sticks to most surfaces but can be removed as many as 200 times without leaving a residue. Kids can crumple the stickers up and smooth them back down without so much as a wrinkle. A big part of Walls 360’s business is licensing content used in graphics. Every new deal, like a partnership with Penguin being announced at the trade show next week, adds to the company’s catalog. New content, such as images of Marilyn Monroe, Moshi Monsters and vintage art from the Moulin Rouge in Paris, goes live every month. The biggest slice of the company’s business is video game graphics, but business-to-business products such as corporate badges for conventions and step-and-repeat logos subsidize more creative efforts, like tangrams, moveable geometric shape stickers for children. Walls 360 has shipped more than 100,000 logos since opening its production facility."
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"They’ve put in the time, working seven days a week to keep production moving, but when asked about what they like about Las Vegas so far, Doffing and Campbell are optimistic, recalling the art community that they found in San Francisco 15 years ago as well the nascent tech environment of the late ’90’s."
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"But Doffing said what finally sold him on Las Vegas was something not heard widely in economic diversification circles — an opportunity to have an impact on the city’s growing arts community. “We went to First Friday when we arrived here, and we were just blown away by some of the people and the art that is here,” he said. He said the company leaders hope to get involved in the community in the months ahead, and they admire the sponsorship work that already done by Zappos.com."
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"Those deals are emblematic of the company’s growth since moving from San Francisco last August. But the reasons the firm came here in the first place say a lot about Las Vegas’ future. “Vegas was perfect,” co-founder John Doffing says. “Much cheaper cost of living, no corporate or personal income taxes and a highly trained work force in digital printing from all the trade shows. We knew our money would go three to five times further here, and it’s close to shipping hubs.” But all of that wasn’t enough to close the deal for Doffing, who says he was the company’s “last holdout” in the decision to move. Only when he got wind of downtown’s revival and Tony Hsieh’s feverish activity in the urban core did he realize this was the place to be. “Seeing First Friday and the Downtown Project pushed me over the edge,” he says."
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"Graphic design startup Walls360 has teamed with Zazzle to let consumers create and sell their own custom wall graphics via Zazzle’s self-service customization platform. With more than 10,000 designs already uploaded, the partnership reinforces the power of an on-demand, long-tail business model online."
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"Nevada was recently listed by CNN as one the nation’s top 10 most entrepreneurial states, citing the state’s growing number of startup companies as a major contributing factor. Walls 360 is one of those startups helping to diversify the Las Vegas economy…The company opened in Las Vegas last September, and has been building up its on-demand production facilities and clientele, which includes major video game publishers Electronic Arts and PopCap. In addition to the licensed artwork, Walls 360 also creates custom wall graphics and stickers for customers. “If you want one big sticker, we can make you one big sticker. If you want 500 little stickers, we’ll make you 500 little stickers,” said Campbell. Walls 360 started in San Francisco, but relocated to Las Vegas last September due in part to Nevada’s non-existent corporate taxes and low cost of living. The Nevada Development Authority, which works to diversify and improve the economy of Southern Nevada, assisted them through the complicated process of relocation…The stickers and murals Walls 360 produce are reusable and removable without leaving sticky residue. Their collection range from artistic, abstract designs to pop culture icons and brands. Everything they offer is created on-demand and shipped in as little as 48 hours, a level of service made possible by the founders’ decision not to outsource the printing. Walls 360 was recently listed by Entrepreneur Magazine as one of the country’s 100 Brilliant Companies."
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"So the product is great, but how did this San Francisco startup end up in Las Vegas? The company started out in SF around 5 years ago, and initially the idea was to do everything but produce the graphics, outsourcing to print shops around the globe. They would run the website, sign licensing deals with owners of the art, coordinate production, and deal with customer service. In a similar way that Zappos got its start by drop-shipping, Walls 360 wanted to avoid the hassle and capital intensity of owning your own machines. (Tech guys really don’t want to get their hands dirty with handling physical product.) It was a great idea in theory, but outsourcing production of the product caused more problems and they concluded they needed to control the process end to end so they could maintain their high end reputation. That meant a significant capital cost, and in the San Francisco bay area it just didn’t make sense financially. So John and Tavia looked at locations all over the US, and decided that Las Vegas was the optimal city…"
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"Local start-up companies use CES as opportunity…Walls360 is another successful local start-up. The company prints anything digital — including video game graphics and art — and brings it to walls in the real world. Virtual stickers that are removable and reusable. “We also found that it’s really beneficial to be based in Las Vegas,” says one of the founders of Walls360 Tavia Campbell. “There’s tax incentives and a skilled workforce ready for jobs. Plus, a lot of people come through here a few times per year for conventions. For work, or for play. So, you get a lot of exposure. It’s a great time to be a start-up company here.”
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"It’s likely that the walls of the Bali Hai country club had never been adorned by characters from Plants Vs. Zombies, but we have Walls360 to thank for the new decor. The company creates fabric-woven, re-positionable wall graphics and wrappers that are much more than stickers and, in many cases, draw heavily on the mobile world for their influences. From video game characters, to logos, monsters, and tangrams, Walls360’s wrappers can be reused on almost any indoor surface up to 200 times. They can also be crumpled, then smoothed out and used again without damaging the wrap. Walls 360 also works with Zazzle.com to make on-demand wall graphics, as well as making full-sized poster graphics."
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"Startups make splash ahead of CES…"
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"The company's secret sauce is what co-founder John Doffing called premium self-adhesive repositionable fabric paper, essentially a high-brow fabric sticker that enables very high-resolution print-outs of any digital image, even up to 8 feet tall, and which can be placed on a wall in such a way that it's very hard to see that it's not painted on. And then it can be taken down and moved in seconds, up to 100 times, and all, Doffing said, without damaging any surfaces. The material can even be crumpled up and then flattened out again without any obvious wrinkles."
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"Walls 360, a Las Vegas graphics start-up, may be an avatar of the Valley’s hopes as a tech incubator. But its latest product line is a testimony to the enduring appeal of the town’s past. The company’s new Vintage Vegas gallery features images from UNLV Special Collections, a repository of the visual and documentary history of Southern Nevada. Visitors to the gallery can select images of the city’s past and order them as repositionable wall art. That means Vegas-lovers can now have a 5-foot tall vintage shot of the “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign or reproduction of the 1945 Helldorado program cover. The Las Vegas photos now share a place in the Walls 360 lineup alongside graphics from games such as Plants vs. Zombies and Mass Effect 3, entertainment phenomena such as Star Trek and icons such as Marilyn Monroe. It shows how ingrained Las Vegas has become in the global pop-cultural imagination. You have to read the small print on each page, though, to see the real significance of this gallery. The boilerplate description of each graphic, “Origin: MADE IN USA: Las Vegas, Nevada,” hints at the subtle shift at work here. The Las Vegas brand isn’t just something we burnish to attract visitors; it’s now a commodity that can be exported. And the selling of that brand just might be a key to the future for a city that’s no longer the world’s leading gaming destination."
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