Photo by Donald A. Promnitz From left, Mike Bowman, Nader Assemi and Tyler Weihi of Backstory Creative have started Backstory Studios out of the Peerless Building in Downtown Fresno as a way to help businesses tell their own story.

As Backstory Creative partners Mike Bowman, Nader Assemi and Tyler Weihi sit in an empty room in the Peerless Building in Downtown Fresno, they admit they have a ways to go in getting the gritty, brick-lined studio to where they want it to be.

It’s a work in progress, but they say the 500-square-foot studio will become a creative hub, deeply embedded in the downtown community. In it, they hope to do everything from shooting commercials, to editing video, to recording podcasts, not only for themselves, but anyone looking for a place to create.

“It’s definitely a blank canvas right now,” Bowman said. “It’s not much to look at, but it will be a space where you come in and you’re kind of inspired to create art just from the environment.”

Backstory Studios is Phase 2 for their business, which started earlier this year just before the pandemic hit. As for their overall business operations, they continue to operate out of an office in North Fresno in the busy Palmdon area.

The advertising agency initially began with Bowman and Weihi, two friends who’d worked together for four years. With a background in the real estate industry, Assemi’s first conversation with them was as a customer. The three of them would end up working together on several projects. Then they decided to join forces.

Under their current business model, Assemi said they only take on a core group of customers, with the goal being to grow alongside them and become part of their overall strategy.

“I think the common thread is everybody cares about Fresno and we all work in the relationship business — real estate is very relationship-based,” Assemi said. “Through the leveraging of all our relationships, we’ve been able to develop a nice customer base of companies that we like and brands that we like that also do good work for the community.”

Specializing in videography, Bowman, Weihi and Assemi are seeking out a versatile platform and an array of options for their clientele. For them, this means not only leading advertising campaigns and projects (business-to-customer), but also simply renting equipment and space for those companies to do it themselves (business-to-business).

However, the trio said that Covid-19 has seen them and their customers pivot somewhat in their approach to advertising and marketing. Namely, this has meant a sizable increase in the need for social media presence online. This was especially the case in the early phase of the lockdowns, when Californians had to shelter in place for weeks on end.

“There were a lot of people spending time on social media, so you had an even more captive audience online,” Assemi said. “So I think that became an opportunity for customers with means to do it, but put your foot to the floor and generate content to get in front of them.”

Meanwhile, the three said that Backstory is not only interested in marketing for other companies, but in helping to incubate and cultivate new, local talent. With the opening of Backstory Studios, their aim is to provide up-and-coming videographers, photographers and other content creators with the tools and environment to succeed and potentially be recruited by them later on.

“Hopefully, we can rent this place out and get to know these people that are doing some cool projects and help them out along the way,” Weihi said. “And when we need that for another project and we’re growing, we already know and have the people that we want and in a sense, we’re kind of grooming them.”

Bowman added to this that they hope it will be part of the revitalization of Downtown Fresno, as the studio will incentivize that local talent to stay local.

“Because a lot of them are moving to L.A. to get these certain things, where it’s like we don’t need to leave Fresno to create and be surrounded by other creatives who want the same thing,” he said.

Alongside the revitalization of Downtown Fresno, Bowman, Weihi and Assemi are also expecting their company to play a role in the post-Covid economic recovery.