Meet Cindy Tjoflat of Concord Creative

Today we’d like to introduce you to Cindy Tjoflat.

Cindy, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
Essentially, we are the result of two people who were sick of the corporate world, all of its layers of bureaucracy, and the diluted work product that big business produces. We knew we had the talent, the drive, and the know-how to do what big business does – but more efficiently, more effectively, and with true thought, creativity, and craftsmanship shining through in the end product.

Tom and I met at an ‘old-school’ photo studio giant in Atlanta. It had lots of opportunity with fantastic clients, but they essentially deemed anything that wasn’t for a particular client unimportant. This ended up being their ultimate demise when that client pulled everything. Luckily, Tom and I had read the writing on the wall, and having already been fed up with the general negative culture and lack of vision that it possessed, we had struck out on our own before the doors were closed.

In 2008, we found ourselves married with two tween daughters and a newborn son, starting our journey to conquer the American Dream via working out of our kitchen. Tom acquired a dirt floor shop in downtown Tucker, named his business TOJO, and was working hard at gaining new business on the shop side. A previous client had reached out to me after I exited to inquire what I was doing. This led to us acquiring our first photography client, which segued into designing and building their showrooms, retail displays, and eventually partnering with their product development team to assist them in designing their products. We were on our way.

Soon after, TOJO became too big for the dirt floor shop and the work I was managing and executing on the design side needed a home as well. We moved into a legitimate (concrete floor) facility in Tucker to allow us the ability to handle more work and more clients. Eventually, the design business grew to match the shop business and it was too much under one roof. In 2011, we decided we needed to officially segregate the design and photo side of our business from the shop side. I stayed in the space we were in and TOJO moved into a much larger facility about a mile away.

Fast-forward to 2016. This became our ‘come back together’ year. By now, we’ve gained a lot of experience as business owners; we’ve had successes and a couple of bumps. But not only had we maintained our core client base for 8 years, we’d added to it, so we knew we were doing something right. After stepping back and looking in at ourselves, and looking out at our competitive landscape, it felt obvious that it was time to evolve yet again. Tom and I decide to merge TOJO and Vellum to form Concord Creative, a ‘one stop shop’ for custom fabrication, photography, and design. Here we are in 2017 and we are still getting settled in our new space –but we’re extremely excited about this new chapter and are looking forward to creating even more amazing work for amazing brands and people.

Has it been a smooth road?
Ha! No. It’s absolutely anything but easy. The amount of stress (all things considered between kids, schools, animals, home owning, employees, contracts, clients, deadlines, money…and being business partners with your spouse) is unbelievable. I often wonder ‘why are we doing this to ourselves?’ But every day, when I get to my desk and take that silent minute to be grateful, I am very proud of what we’ve built and I know why we do what we do.

So, let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Concord Creative story. Tell us more about the business.
Concord Creative is the southeast’s resource for visual, tangible, and aesthetic creative product. Photography, design, brand visualization, aesthetic product design, environmental design, custom fabrication and scenery, installation of said fabricated elements. These are the buckets we work in. We’ve executed work ranging from clients in the home and apparel industry to technology to entertainment… and no project is too big or too small.

As a company, we are extremely proud of our ability to execute at such a high level of quality. More often than not, our work product exceeds our clients’ expectations. There are usually a lot of ‘wow’s and that puts a smile on our faces every time.

What sets us apart is our business model. Too many businesses feel like they must specialize. I don’t believe in that–at least not in the creative circuit. We do so much under one roof, it allows for brands to not have to have five different vendors to manage to execute their creative. This also ensures an enormous amount of consistency brands can’t get when they have multiple partners executing various facets of a project that has to get into one deliverable. It’s allows brands a huge advantage to have a resource like Concord Creative to ensure the best final product.

How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
On the strictly business side, it’s a hard guess. With so many shifts in the economy and politics, this industry feels the pinch the fastest when times are uncertain. And there seems to be a lot of uncertainly lately in those arenas. Additionally, the demographic trends put so much focus on millennials and the advertising world is practically catering to their every whim. E-commerce is booming and retail appears to be dying. But humans are cyclic. We always go back to what we know, what makes us feel comfortable. So it will be interesting to see where we end up in 10 years. I am confident of our business model, our total capabilities, and our ability to evolve. Being able to reinvent yourself is key in this ever-changing climate we live in.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://concordcreative.com
• Phone: 404-464-8007
• Email: [email protected]

Image Credit:
© 2017 Concord Creative, Inc.

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