Nou, hallo Amsterdam!
262 km
This is, give or take, the distance between our headquarters & historical offices in Belgium, and the great city that is Amsterdam.
See, this is one of the perks of living in Europe: everything is actually so stupidly close compared to let’s say the vast American plains, that in a matter of hours, we can cross borders and turn our world upside down.
Just a couple of hours away from new cultures, new languages, and most likely a big step out of our comfort zone. The thing is, however, as human beings, we tend to take everything for granted and forget how lucky we are to be miles away from a world of opportunities, but let me come back to that later.
Technically, in 2021, Dogstudio will turn 15.
A long enough period to look behind and hopefully evolve and grow from past mistakes. Now, in my opinion, the biggest mistake of them has been waiting 11 years to try ourselves on new challenges in new countries.
You know, when you build your company in a city of roughly 100.000 people and a country the size of the state of Maryland, you don’t exactly set the bar high or your expectations to be one day collaborating with Fortune 500 firms, culture-defining organizations, world-leading festivals, and the largest tech firms…
But then again, here we go:
Last year, during the absolute reign of It-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named ( *cough* Corona *cough* ), a few things happened:
On one side, we experienced an exciting and rather challenging increase in demands, leading to new visible, and also less visible collaborations with Microsoft, Tomorrowland, Tomorrowland (again), Ford, TIME inc, Rappi, and Amazon-owned ZOOX to name but a few. And as the cherry on the cake, we managed to even close 2020 (against all odds) with our best results to date in terms of visibility, growth, and revenues.
On the other side, the absolute fragility of the situation pushed us to seriously re-consider our very own future from different angles.
As we recall it, there’s a single moment which lead us to open our office in the US: losing a pitch for a notorious New York magazine because “the other guys were just around the corner”.
That sucked.
Moreover, quite recently, we noticed that as much as we loved our little town in Belgium where everything started, we took a moment to reflect and only noticed an ocean of missed opportunities for not putting ourselves out there before. Don’t get me wrong, we loved being the underdog (see what I did there?) for a while, but this era has come to a close. So we decided to take our business about 262 km up north to world-renown Amsterdam to let us join in on its party.
We never lied about our intentions, Dogstudio always has been about friendships, human connections, and encounters, and our only regret since we opened both our Chicago and Mexico offices actually were for waiting too long and missing on meeting amazing people in front of a coffee or a beer. Some of them even joined us in our adventure either as clients, as teammates, and for some, as both ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ .
Today, we’re excited to announce Dogstudio will be opening its Amsterdam location as of the 1st of February.
We consider ourselves lucky to be able to once again step out of our comfort zone and embrace what may come. So more than ever, if you’re around, we’d once again love to meet new friends and go for a beer, bitterballen, or both, because who knows how long we might end up sticking together?
See you in Amsterdam.
262 km from where it originally started.
Give or take.
Dogstudio is a multidisciplinary Creative Studio with offices in Chicago, Mexico, Belgium, and well also Amsterdam, committed to crafting brandings, digital products & experiences that move people. Our clients include Microsoft, ZOOX, Adobe, Tomorrowland, Time Magazine, American Airlines, Rappi, The Museum Of Science and Industry, Chicago, The Navy Pier, Crypt TV, Quanta Magazine, bla bla bla, who’s still reading anyway?
