Why did we choose Newport?
Choosing where to base your business is a massive deal.
For a while we seriously considered not having an office, after all in a post-pandemic world it is more viable than ever to work fully remotely.
The nature of our business is that much of the work is out and about anyway. Both the images and video side of our company are usually based around going directly to the client to help them tell their stories. Even when it comes to podcasting one of our key offers to customers is that we can set up a mobile podcast studio wherever is convenient to them.
When you add in the hassle and the fixed costs that come with renting bricks and mortar it seemed a no-brainer to stay remote. Though our directors have over 60 years of experience honing what we do, HayMan Media itself is new, and we all know the survival rates for new companies.
Given that the key reason for early business failure is cash flow, why have we decided to take on our premises on North Street and give ourselves a hard target of the cash we HAVE to earn every month? There are several answers to this but the key one is “Newport”.
Location
Our location is, frankly, perfect. We are just 90 seconds walk (that’s right we have tested it) from Newport Station. This means we are 15 minutes for Cardiff and just over 30 minutes from Bristol. If people are driving we are five minutes off the M4. There is also parking literally straight across the road. It was an opportunity we just couldn’t pass up.
The office and landlord
This building itself is owned by the amazing graphic design company Parade Design. They took an unloved building, and totally renovated it into this stunning creative space..
A big thing for us was to have an environment which stimulates good creativity and storytelling. So many office spaces these days are whitewashed and soulless and the second we walked into the Parade offices in Newport we knew it was a place we could (literally) do business.
The thing that really clinched it in terms of the space was the ability to record podcasts in three different settings. There was our self-contained office where we could record purely high quality audio podcasts, but there was also space for more ambitious recordings.
The sofa area and the boardroom table enable us to create spaces for quality video recording meaning that clients can have incredible video of their podcast for sharing on both their website and social media. This is becoming an ever more vital element of podcast promotion.
The city itself
The final clincher for choosing Newport was the direction of travel the city is currently on. There is a real buzz there at the moment. Developments like the Market as well as projects like the PopUp Business School are indicative of a city which is on the up.
We were also really drawn to Newport’s radical history, musical legacy and enduring sense of community. Combine this with the steps taken to develop it, and we truly feel like we are at the start of something really good here in Wales’ third largest city.