pasadena
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Scratch Financial found a business at the vet’s front desk
A rescued cat helped inspire a lending company. The more revealing story is how Scratch turned the veterinary bill into a business in payments, software, and the delicate art of getting care paid for.
The Pasadena Agency That Learned to Sell Rocket Parts, Rural Medicine and a City
Echo-Factory built a 23-person agency around a useful bet: the more technical, regulated or unglamorous the product, the more valuable a clear story becomes.
ISET Agency Built a Business Around Being the Missing Piece
The Pasadena firm sells strategy, publicity and business development in one relationship-heavy package. Its revealing advantage is not a single channel - it is the willingness to enter when a client has run out of hands, language or nerve.
Before the music starts, EKA gets the city to listen
A Hollywood Boulevard concert needs more than a headliner. EKA works on the permits, politics, and public trust that let ambitious plans leave the drawing board.
Street Level Strategy knows the hard part comes after hello
A Pasadena public affairs firm brings campaign organizers to census calls, airbag recalls and kitchen-table paperwork. Its most useful lesson: getting someone’s attention is only the beginning.
Wonder Media wants to take vendor management off your to-do list
The Pasadena agency bundles brand strategy, websites, advertising, and email into one flat-fee team. Its most interesting promise is the work that happens between those jobs.
TYS Creative and the art of making the complicated click
A scanner, a solar program, a neighborhood: TYS Creative gives each a way to explain itself. Behind the agency is a designer whose first audience problem played out on the magazine rack.
Good intentions need a project manager
The Social Impact Firm helps organizations do the work their missions demand. For founder Bree Jensen, that work became personal when the Eaton Fire destroyed her family home.
Toy Robot Media builds the show before the clock runs out
A rehearsal problem at RSA Conference reveals what this Pasadena creative agency sells: screen graphics, fast revisions, and people who can still make the deadline.
CMg Design makes complicated companies easier to read
A Pasadena studio’s work for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Mercury Insurance and a local nonprofit shows what graphic design can do when the subject refuses to fit inside a logo.
The $80 Billion Bank That Started in a Chinatown Storefront
East West Bank spent five decades turning a Chinatown savings and loan into the financial bridge between the United States and Asia. Today it holds about $80 billion in assets - and still answers the phone in the language you grew up speaking.
THE/STUDIO
THE/STUDIO is a custom product manufacturing and on-demand merchandising platform that connects brands, creators, and organizations to a global network of vetted factories. Founded in 2013 as a custom patch shop, it now produces 300+ categories of custom goods - pins, patches, apparel, coins, drinkware and more - with no minimum orders, fast turnaround, and software that compresses the traditional sourcing process from months to days. The company positions itself as a modern, ethical answer to slow legacy manufacturing, serving over 100,000 customers including Nike, Adidas, Netflix, Uber and the Met Store.
Dewey Pest & Termite Control
Dewey Pest & Termite Control is a California family-owned pest and termite management company founded in 1929 by Ray M. Dewey. Operating as Dewey Services, Inc. and headquartered in Pasadena, it runs more than 30 branches across the state with roughly 750 employees. Dewey provides residential and commercial pest control, termite treatment and whole-house fumigation, and an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) program that balances effective control with public health and environmental safety. Its long-running tagline: Environmental Security Since 1929.