Greetings and a question for you

[DrKing2010]

Hey everyone, I have been browsing around for a while and appreciate all the knowledge everyone has to share. I'm 23, from Oakland, CA & I did wedding videography part-time for about 3 years but gave it up in 2005 because I realized I was getting paid less than $5/hr. The culmination of those efforts is summed up in this trailer that took me about 3 weeks to edit. Check it out and let me know what you think:

http://www.hustlemoney.com/SFStrailer.zip

Well like most young people I have been trying to figure out what I'm doing with my life and I have been seriously considering getting back into weddings but with a well laid out plan. When I started my first business I didn't realize the importance of good marketing and thus did not allocate any money for that purpose. The result was averaging less than one wedding per month, which was okay because I was a full-time student living at mom's house.

Now I'm a part-time student and full-time employee living on my own and over the last 6 months I have been assembling a business model and plan that looks like it has great potential. When putting a plan like this together a lot of assumptions are involved and I have tried to remain conservative but the whole thing really hinges on one assumption: the potential for sales growth over the years. This is where I have made my most unconservative assumption. Please take a look at this image that shows my optimistic sales projections:

http://hustlemoney.com/growth-projection.jpg

My question: Is it possible to achieve this kind of growth? Now I know there are countless factors that go into answering this question such as pricing, marketing efforts, staffing, etc. I could easily write a 10 page essay detailing my thoughts and plans in these and other areas but let’s assume that everything is in place: brand, website, print materials, pricing that doesn’t alienate high- or low-end clients, a comprehensive marketing plan that grows in proportion to sales, employees to shoot and edit, and everything else that goes into the business. Bottom line: Is it possible to obtain these numbers?

I’m in the SF Bay Area and according to my research there are around 27,000 weddings per year in the greater metropolitan area. I have read that 20% of couples hire a videographer and I would like to think that capturing 10% of the market within 10 years is possible. So 27,000 x 0.2 x 0.1 = 540 weddings in year 10. Possible right?

Please ask any questions you have in order to clarify my question. And thanks in advance for your input. I look forward to participating in the forum, sharing knowledge, and gaining some too.

Graham King

[MediaConcepts]

Hi Graham,

Welcome to WVP!

I applaud your optimism but how do you plan on shooting and editing 78 weddings in one year? Do you plan on hiring people?

Joe

[DrKing2010]

Thanks Joe. Definately. I plan to do a lot of shooting and editing myself in the first few years and hire one or two people as needed. As sales grow I will hire more people to shoot and edit and phase myself out of this work leaving me to focus on quality control, customer service, and growth.

One major key to success will be training editors to finish projects in a certain number of hours. I plan on developing some sort of system in the first few years before I turn this work over to employees.

[video 101]

Graham...welcome. I have been in the wedding business for over 22 years. It is not easy by any means. You have to be realistic. 78 weddings in the first year is streching it I think.

First off, you need to be good at what you do. If you produce professional looking wedding videos, you will do fine, but you also need to keep that high level of qaulity going in every production and it's very hard, when you start doing one wedding after another. Not only will you get bogged down and back logged, your creativity may suffer to, because you will start having brides calling, looking for their wedding dvd and you will have to finish it if you have the time, or not.

Second, to get you name out there, you may have to start at a lower price level to attract brides. Not the case all the time, but most of the time. You want to start you businees off on the right foot, don't get over loaded. Remember one bad wedding will get you name out there a lot faster than producing 10 good weddings.

Get to know and network with a few photographers. They are a good source for referrals.

Treat your customers as friends and not just clients. Word of mouth is by far the best form of advertising you can have.

Don't just rely on wedding videos. How I built my business to be successful and built it fast, was to get out into the community and do events like concerts, plays and recitals. The amount of people who will see your name, is unreal. You can make really good money, especially on dance recitals.

I only do about 30 wedding a year, the rest ar doing a good number of Dance recitals, and some plays and concerts too. We also do photo montages, some corporate work and dvd duplications and transfers. The more people you do work for, the more they will know your business is out there and the more referrals you will get. Most of my business..85% is based on referrals.

Remember, you can make a good living in video, but don't try to over do it, you will burn out very fast!!!!!

[Psynema]

Hi Graham,

Welcome to WVP!

I applaud your optimism but how do you plan on shooting and editing 78 weddings in one year? Do you plan on hiring people?

Joe

78? You should check out year 14 :icon_eek:

[DrKing2010]

78? You should check out year 14 :icon_eek:

Haha yea year 14 is a doozie but at that point, if everything goes as planned, I have 7 camera people and editors working full time with benefits and I'm turning a $2 million profit.

[Bonsai]

First, welcome to WVP.

Second, do you want to be a wedding video factory? No offense intended, but that what your plan sounds like to me. A lot of people hire staff to shoot and edit (and run other aspects of the business as well) but at your projected numbers, it sounds like you'll never meet any of your clients personally. I have always thought of wedding videography as a very personal commitment type of a business.
We are a 2 person company, so obviously we know all of our clients quite well. We limit to about 20 weddings a year, but we also have a rapidly growing corporate end to our company. (My husband runs the company full time, and I work full time outside our company.) Do you plan on doing strictly weddings in this business plan? Or will corporate (and other events) enter into the plan?
To answer you question, your figures are possible, but not probable. The statistics and percentages add up, but stats and % don't sell a product. Do you like shooting and editing weddings? Or are you just looking at numbers and dollars signs? My answer isn't meant to dissuade you, but rather to get the wheels turning and the conversation flowing.
You do have the advantage of being located in a year round climate for this business. But you also already have a lot of competition in your area.

Looking forward to yours (and others) replies.

[video 101]

First, welcome to WVP.

Second, do you want to be a wedding video factory? No offense intended, but that what your plan sounds like to me.

We have 2 video companies in my are who operate like this and have a very bad reputation. People in Northern Illinois may know who I am talking about:) It does look like a video factory to me. When you doing that many weddings a year, the quality suffers, brides will be waiting for months, if not longer for their wedding dvd. It seems like you are in this for the money and not the quality. We are all in it for the money, but many of us know the only way we stay in business is to produce a high quality wedding dvd. If your brides love your work, they will send others. And to draw that many brides in to your store, your will have to offer something attactive, price wise.

What are you planning on charging for your wedding?

You have every right to dream big. That is the American dream, but you must start out slow and get it right the first time, or you will be out of business in no time. i wish you the best of luck:)

[Psynema]

Haha yea year 14 is a doozie but at that point, if everything goes as planned, I have 7 camera people and editors working full time with benefits and I'm turning a $2 million profit.

Even 14 years into the future I'm sure you'll be the first and only if you pull it off :cool2:

I think you'd have to be like a national chain or something to get 1500 a year. Are these one or two camera shoots?

[glitterfilm]

Graham there is another company in your area that takes a similiar approach. They take on whatever call comes in and have maintained a good reputation for delivering a safe and basic product. No idea what sort of numbers he is doing but I'm sure he's got a million dollar business. When I had worked there over 6yrs ago they were doing 12 weddings a day. I think it's up to 20 now.

[RT Steele]

I'm not going to comment on doing 78 weddings a year. Hell, who knows? I do applaud your zeal. Wish I had that at 23.

Your trailer though...

Some really nice footage and I bet it was fun to do but man, I needed dramamine halfway through it. I think you overedited that thing a bit. Some of the shots were so compelling I wanted to see more of them but you chose instead to allow the tempo of the song to overpower the content. If this were made specifically for one couple it might be just fine but as a demo of your talent I can't remember a single scene from it.

You've definitely got a good flair for timing and FX and I know it's hard to pull in the reins on this kind of stuff though.

- RT

[DrKing2010]

Thank you to everyone for your insight. Of course my dream is to be a big time millionaire CEO, but most importantly my dream is to built a great company, one where employees are happy to come to work, employees are well paid and have benefits. A company known for taking care of its clients, producing consistent quality products, a company that has a good standing in the community, a company with a high regard for ethics.

I thing all that stuff is the easy part though.

I am definitely leaning towards partnering with a photographer in this venture. I am also considering starting slower and building at a more manageable pace.

Bonsai - It does seem like a wedding factory and on this scale it really is. But I want to leave the negative connotation of "factory" behind. With the right people working for me and the right direction I believe it is possible to produce this many wedding videos and keep everyone happy at the same time. I do like shooting and editing weddings if I am reasonably compensated. It's a rewarding business; there’s nothing like moving a person to tears with your art.

Kristen - Can you recall the name of the company you talked about? I would like to do some research on them and get an idea of how they do things.

RT - Yea I know what you mean with the trailer. When I first played it all the way through it made me dizzy! Before I really put it out there I am going to go back in and change some things.

Thanks again everyone.

Graham

[Bonsai]

Yea I know what you mean with the trailer. When I first played it all the way through it made me dizzy! Before I really put it out there I am going to go back in and change some things.

Thanks again everyone.

Graham


I watched your trailer as well. I don't know if that's the right song, but I liked it (meaning don't know how people searching for any aspect of wedding vendors feel about "Another One Bites the Dust"). It looked really fun to edit to, and it kept me interested the whole way through. I didn't care for constant spinning effect, but the shots you chose are really nice, happy and emotional clips. Here's the one true caveat... you have a great catch phrase "Think all wedding videos are alike? Think again" (Sorry if I didn't quote exactly, but that's the idea) That's GREAT wording, I love that. But then you show clips from all different weddings that seemed quite similar, or at least gave the illusion of "similar" because they were together. Good clips, mind you, but the similarities took away from your great catch phrase. Maybe don't show all the cake cuttings at once, and all the garter toss clips together, etc. Just my thoughts. :icon_mrgreen:

[AndrewMSV]

Hey Graham,
Welcome to WVP.

I'm a few klicks south of where you are and have been in business at a moderate growth rate (read: "minimal marketing") for 3-4 years. I haven't been doing this as long as others on this board and I am also not making $2 million in profit.

Firstly, I applaude your plan of attack. I think it's a much better approach to have a good business plan in place than it is to wing it like I did.

A few thoughts from a not-so-cagey not-real-veteran:
You mentioned that you planned a $2,000,000.00 profit by year 14 based on 25% growth each year after year one. That means in year one you project a rough profit margin of $47,514 based on 78 weddings. That averages out to be a $609 of profit per wedding. That sounds reasonable.

But in order to achieve a volume that roughly doubles the average videographer's yearly total, you'd have to have some really good systems in place (i.e., one full time employee or two part timers) OR you'd have to be doing weddings simple and fast and selling them on the cheap. The reason I say this, of course, is that a $3000+ videography package usually involves delivering a highly artistic product whereas a $1000 package can be done in a quick-edit fashion.

I would say that on average, I spend about 50-70 total hours in marketing, sending emails, calling, filming, editing, packaging, and shipping a ~$5000-$5500 wedding package. Maybe more, if I'm not disciplined. That means I'm getting paid only about $70-$110/hour. And that's just the raw numbers without including other costs that I incur (camera wear and tear; consumables like tapes, ink, discs; mileage on the car; insurance; association fees; magazine ads; online ads; ISPs; utilities; contractors I pay; state and federal taxes; and so on and so forth.)

After all is said and done, I might make $40-$80/hr. The difference between the initial hourly pay rate and after all the costs are incurred and factored in is about 25%-50%.

A $609 profit would imply (based on my model, which you are clearly - and rightfully - trying to avoid), you are only working about 10 hours at $60/hr or you are getting paid $9 to work 70 hrs.

In order to do 78 weddings a year, you'd have to be on the 'quick-edit' model rather than the highly artistic model. There are only 52 weeks in a year so you'd have to be shooting and editing more than one wedding a week.

If you can shoot an eight-hour wedding for $1000 and turn it around in 2-3 hours, I think you have something going.

I, for one, prefer to do 10 weddings at $10,000 each than to do 80 weddings at $1250 each.

But having said that, there are many companies out there that do the high-volume model like you are attempting. Eric Model and Adam Mancini out of New York turn around 100+ weddings and Bar Mitzvahs annually and their editor cuts a wedding in six hours. I imagine their profit margin is pretty decent. So the answer to your question is yes, it can be done but a good structure is vital to your success.

Good luck to you and keep us appraised on your situation!
Welcome, again, to WVP.

----
edit: btw, I'm really bad at math so please correct me if I'm wrong somewhere. I wouldn't be surprised.

[DrKing2010]

Andrew your post is definitely the most encouraging so far. I didn't go over your math but the point is there. With the numbers I have I am looking at about a 40% margin, which I think is very high. I can imagine it coming down due to unforeseen reasons.

One very important thing to do will be to control the hours per project as you have mentioned. It quickly became clear to me that labor costs make up most of my total costs (as in many service firms). I have found that the percentage of cost from labor increases over the life of the business because hours must increase proportionally with weddings while many other costs increase fractionally. Year one shows that 25% of my cost is from labor while year 14 shows 60% of cost from labor. When extrapolated further that number climbs to 68% so there seems to be a limit there.

The info on the hours you spend on a project is very helpful to me. My current model is a combination of quick-edit and more time consuming editing packages. Ideally though I would have 2 or even 3 companies each with their own brand and positioned differently in the marketplace in order to take advantage of the various target markets. But this would be expensive to accomplish at start-up so it will remain a future option.


Blanche, I'm glad you like my trailer. I never realized it before but you're right, there does seem to be a contradiction between my catch phrase and the way I show similar clips. Also, while a lot of people like it, the "another one bites the dust" thing isn't getting quite the humorous response I thought I would get. I'm pretty sure now that I will be doing all new trailers and demos for my new venture. I'll feel like I really have a fresh start with not only all new footage (hd instead of sd) but also all new feel and attitude that is in line with my image.


Thanks again to everyone, your replies are much appreciated.

[Bill Grant]

Hey Graham,
Welcome, and boy I can tell you where I'd be if I started in this business at your age, but my only comment otherwise is the bulletholes in the trailer are very creepy. Is there a driveby at the wedding? :speechless-smiley: or is this trying to use the context of the song (a shooting with machine guns etc) either way it doesn't fit in a wedding context. I think the others covered the spinning transition so I won't but welcome, and I love the enthusiasm for what we do. BTW I have been trying to go fulltime and haven't gotten it together yet. This business takes alot of time & money to build. I made $21k in my first year and spent it all on equipment/marketing/etc. We'll double that this year, but not look at "making" near enough. So take it slow, build it well, and you will get what you need out of it. Don't rush it, you've got plenty of time.
Bill

[Mossy]

With the numbers I have I am looking at about a 40% margin, which I think is very high. I can imagine it coming down due to unforeseen reasons.

Hi Graham,

Well done on looking upon your wedding video company from a business perspective. At just 22 I get the impression that you're going to go a long way. Some pointers

40% isn't very high in terms of gross. In fact, any business needs to make at least a 40% gross profit margin in order to survive and grow.
Your projected sales figures and growth are impressive but if I were an investor looking in on your company I'd have to ask "How are you going to generate a high volume of traffic to your services? What are you going to do that is different from all the other videographers out there?'
Don't rely soley on your product and think because you've got talent that people are going to bang your door down; ain't going to happen. So figure out how much of your budget is going to be spent on marketing!!!
Who is your market? (High volume in a saturated market says "budget bride" to me)
Figure out how to effectively market your product.
Best of luck with it!

M