Partnerships with other companies

A

ASchear

Well-known member
My company, 5801 Productions, is focused right now on creating business videos for the web.

I've spent the past few months networking and building some solid relationships with fellow business people in my area which has led to some great, steady work. In my time networking, I've focused a lot on getting to know web designers, social media managers, and other people whose clients are in line with what I want mine to be. It has come up a few times in conversation that some of these folks in the marketing realm would like to partner with my company in order to offer video services as part of their marketing packages (think a big package deal for companies such as a website, social media management, and videos all for $___). I think this is precisely what I'd like to do, and I think in order to keep busy it would be best to partner with a couple of different firms.

Does anyone have experience here with partnerships like this? As I approach these different firms and talk to them about working together (essentially it would be them subcontracting us for production, they would handle sales, client relationship, etc) what are the guidelines I should go by? Specifically, should I still be trying to maintain copyright on my work or would this be better suited as a "work made for hire" agreement? Putting my company to work for another company is something new for me, since I've only been in business about 20 months and have mainly worked directly with my clients.

Thanks all!!
 
It will be very complicated if it's not "work made for hire". If it's not, clients will be forced to sign different contracts with your company and the company that sold them the services. The person who brought you the business owns the relationship and will be wondering if you are going up bypass them in future etc. In order to have a good relationship with your "partner" companies, make life very easy for them so that they keep coming back to you .

If you mange this relationship well, you will get a lot of business whilst sitting at home . :-) you can focus just on quality delivery
 
I do this quite a bit with one of my companies. I use different business models depending on the circumstances. In one case where partnering alone wasn't good enough we ended up creating a new company with them and taking a substantial equity position.
 
Thanks for the input! I agree that the person who brings me the business owns the client relationship and therefore the contract and understand how they might feel about us bypassing them in the future. I also agree that it should be as easy as possible for our partner companies.

I feel that, if it were just a couple of odd jobs - I have no issue doing it "work for hire" style and relinquishing all credit. However, since I see these as longer term relationships on productions I'm going to want credit for and want to show in our portfolio / reel, I would feel uncomfortable in that type of agreement. I think my preference would be for my partner companies to be telling their clients "We work closely with an independent production company to produce the videos" rather than "Our video team produces the videos." Know what I mean? Is this the wrong attitude to bring to the table for this type of deal?

I also think it's a great idea, if business is well enough, to create a shared entity to work on such projects. That may be a bit further down the road though. ;) Craig, would you mind going into more detail about the different models you go by?
 
They shouldn't have an issue with you showing the work as part of your portfolio. Also most of them wouldn't mind introducing you as a separate production company .
 
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