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January 13, 2009

Lapchick Creative calling it quits

Breaking away: Michelle Morel, Jodie Lapchick and Mandy Davis (from the left) will split up Lapchick Creative's clients and begin solo careers. (Photo/Michelle Hammarstrom)
By Whit Richardson

Ad firm Lapchick Creative is going out of business due to the slowing economy.

Jodie Lapchick, chief artistic director of the full-service marketing and communications firm she founded in 1998, told Mainebiz yesterday that clients started to slip away as the economic downturn hit earlier this fall. "It became harder to get new business, which has always been easy for us, and regular clients started putting things on hold," she says. "We found ourselves sitting around a lot; and the money becoming scarcer and scarcer."

So, in the middle of December, Lapchick sat down with her senior managers and they decided to cut their losses. The firm's seven employees were told about the decision the week after Christmas.

Though bittersweet because it comes on the heels of the company's 10-year anniversary party in October, Lapchick says the decision to shutter the firm brings an enormous sense of relief. "What this means for me is I'm able to do all of the parts of an ad agency as single consultant." she says. "The ability for me to become completely engrossed in a project for several months and then move onto another project is the opposite of what I have now."

She says she never wants to own her own business again; that way she can get back to the creative work that led her into the field. "I am a horrible business person. I tend to give away the farm," she admits. "But I have great ideas and I can make things happen."

The company's other senior managers, Mandy Davis and Michelle Morel, will also emerge as independent advertising and marketing consultants. Lapchick will retain one client, Amtrak's Downeaster, while Davis and Morel will split a handful of others, according to Lapchick.

 

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