Our History

1995-2000

Chris Wizner (aka our Founder and CEO), told everyone in his 4th grade class that he was going to start a computer company someday. At this time, his family was very poor. His family went bankrupt on a house and got evicted from another house that was getting comdemmed. You name it, no bueno. Chris didn’t have it easy.

2001

Chris Wizner (aka our Founder and CEO) was at Agoura High School and had to be a science class aid. Chris spent a lot of this time sleeping! Finally the science teacher supervising him told him he had to do something more productive with his time. Chris decided to go to the library and try and read how to start a company. Most people don’t realize it’s not something many people know how to do and they don’t teach it at most public schools. For all most kids know, it could cost thousands and involve a lawyer to start a company… maybe you even need a college degree…. and most kids definitely think there’s an age limit to starting a company. Chris found a book at the high school library on starting a company. He read this during his science aiding school period and got to page 42 where he found out starting a company was as simple a going to the local newspaper and asking for a D.B.A. (doing business as) statement. Chris never read another page… he decided to start his company right that minute. It only cost $50 to do, there was no age limit (even a 12 year old can do this!). Chris decided he had nothing to loose and everything to gain. Worst case, it would just look good on a resume if he had started his own company at an early age. Best case, Chris could forge his own path with neverending drive and passion for what he does for work every day… and that’s exactly what he did. He decided “Don’t wait for things to happen, MAKE THEM HAPPEN”.

2002-2003

Vivid Candi was incorporated as an California S Corp. In just 2 years, Chris Wizner (aka our Founder and CEO) went from knowing nothing about business, marketing, graphic design, web design to working with clients such as Pepperdine University, Gotcha, Malibu Magazine and more. He had a team of 3 amazing designers at this time working with him.  He even became an official contributor for a international graphic design magazine and had national articles written about him. His work was showcased worldwide due to his unique taste for surreal graphic design artwork which he loved to do… imagine fish flying through desserts and floating Vivid Candi skyscrapers… well this was the soul of Chris Wizner as a graphic designer. Just the passion for art was enough to make Chris work 50+ hours per week designing graphics and interactive websites.

2004-2006

Vivid Candi continued to grow at record rates of over 250%+ per year with Chris Wizner at the helm as CEO. A great deal of the growth was contributed to a strategic partnership with local magazine, Malibu Magazine. Vivid Candi and Malibu Magazine even shared offices together for 2 years until they both outgrew the shared space and need to get larger separate offices. Vivid Candi was designing as much as 75% of the print ads seen in Malibu Magazine during this era and many other local publications. Vivid Candi had nearly 150 ads per month in circulation in print media and also did tons of direct mail at that time. In this era, Print was at it’s peak and digital was in it’s pampers.

2006-2008

Vivid Candi continued to have rapid growth each year and grew up to a team of 16 people working with some amazing national level clients. This was at the peak of the economy just before it crashed the following year. It was a amazing era in Vivid Candi’s history and we made the official transition from being a full service advertising agency to being the newschool Full Service Digital Agency.

2009-2010

The economy crashed early 2009 and just like many other companies, Vivid Candi had to work really hard to survive. Chris Wizner (aka our Founder and CEO) decided it was time for Vivid Candi to make 2 of it’s most loyal and hard working employees partners. Besides, Chris already considered them great friends on top of some of the best designers he’d ever worked with.  It was time to expand our digital agency despite the terrible economy and having partners with the same goals, vision and passion for the agency was the perfect thing to do to take things to the next level. After all, Chris has said since day 1 that Vivid Candi would someday become the largest digital agency in the world and lead newschool digital advertising & marketing of the future. This can be done much faster with partners that have the same drive and passion that you do.

2011

After the first year of partnership, the partners of Vivid Candi turned things around and conquered the bad economy ending the year with a strong increase in business. All in 1 year, we had the pleasure of working with amazing celebrities, billionairs, trillionairs, national level companies and more. Our agency began to flourish again and ended with amazing progress and innovation. On top of everything, we had the funnest year ever doing all that we accomplished.

2012

Our fast growing digital agency successfully launched offices in New York, Las Vegas and Dallas and continues to grow.