Decade of design

Lisa Slagle’s arrival in Whitefish came mostly by chance.

With her business, Wheelie Creative, going wherever she went, Slagle was headed north to find fresh powder in Canada when fate struck.

“My car died, so I just stayed,” she says. “I had never even researched Whitefish, I didn’t know anything about it.”

Slagle and Wheelie Creative have been in Whitefish for six years, and are celebrating 10 years in business this year.

After originally starting the business in Crested Butte, Colorado, Slagle said her life revolved around her two priorities — work and snowboarding.

“I was freelancing, so I’d hand out business cards on chairlifts and snowboard all day and work all night. I grew the company from there,” she said. “Now we are a full-service agency.”

As a creative agency, Wheelie works with brands — mostly in the outdoors industry but also in beer and coffee — to shape and promote their image through graphic design, website, photography, writing and other services.

At any given time they’re working with 30 different clients, Slagle says, and her crew has grown to eight including her.

Last year they also completed a move from their old building on Wisconsin Avenue to their new spot on Lupfer Avenue just off Second Street.

They’ll host a grand opening and anniversary event this summer to celebrate the business and building, Slagle said, but details are still being worked out.

If a brand wants to work with Wheelie, there’s one major criterion.

“They have to like fun,” Slagle says. “If they’re super rigid and traditional and not creative, then it’s not a good fit. So we like brands that are fun and adventurous and open to creativity — that’s our sweet spot.”

A benefit to sticking with their key industries is that they’re all consumers as well. The best people to work with their brands are the ones that live and breathe their values.

“Usually we’re able to create the kind of content and brand positioning that really resonates with people who use the products. We are the target market most of the time, everybody that works here is super outdoorsy and uses the products, so that’s nice. It’s not like a bunch of corporate people in suits that are trying to figure out how to market mountain bikes,” she says.

Among the brands Wheelie services are 10 Barrel Brewery, Industry 9 Wheels, GSI Outdoors, Shredly Bike Shorts and Whitefish Credit Union.

Concerning the latter, Wheelie hit a home run on the recent Super Bowl Sunday, which featured Whitefish native skiers Maggie Voisin and Parkin Costain and introduced the credit union’s new paperless EcoChecking service.

The ad ran across the state and earned the credit union a handful of awards at the Diamond Awards for the Credit Union National Association.

“They won 10 awards for the work that we’d done for them. It’s kind of cool, they got best in show for credit union marketing and that’s not anything that we thought we’d be good at,” Slagle said.

This summer they’ll also launch a new action sports photography workshop series called Wheelhouse Workshops.

The workshops will travel across the country, pairing professional athletes with budding action sports photographers to teach skills and help build portfolios.

“While we have been really focused on skiing and snowboarding, we’re going to do a mountain bike circuit throughout the country. We’re in the process right now of partnering with different companies in Moab, Sedona, here, so that’s really exciting,” Slagle said. “And it’s female driven. I noticed we’d go to all these industry events and it was always a guy with a camera.”

Asked if there’s been challenges in the last 10 years, Slagle said the whole process has been full of obstacles and challenges.

“Everything,” she said with a laugh. “I mean I work obscene amounts still, because we all care about the clients and the projects. My lifestyle has changed immensely.”

Running a media and tech-based company in Montana has its own set of issues as well, she said.

Mostly it comes down to people underestimating the state’s resources.

“I think a lot of people nationally are like, ‘Oh Montana, do you guys even have Internet?’” she said. “So that’s a big thing to overcome, running a tech company from the mountains of Montana. I always explain, ‘It’s just like Steamboat, Colorado, it’s a mountain town.’ Then once people understand they think it’s cool.”

But while the business and clients have picked up and her responsibilities have grown, Slagle says she still finds time to strap in her snowboard and get her turns in.

“Oh yeah,” she said with a smile. “I always make it happen.”

For more information, visit https://www.wheeliecreative.com/.