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Mission Street Grant

Tell us about your business and what makes it unique. Please provide a general description of your product, customers, competitive landscape, and overall performance.

MANAFEST VISION MEDIA LLC. is an independent record label and music studio based in Long Island, New York. The label encourages all of its creatives to DREAM POSSIBLE and see their dreams through to fruition. Globally our vision encourages local artists to extend their abilities worldwide to collaborate other creatives internationally.When you have a group/community of geniuses inspired and working in fields (within a craft) they are passionate about, the effect resonates to a broader community and new ideas are formed.
Thus far we have had 18 releases musically. We have appeared in blogs globally and various magazines in Japan in addition to collaborating with NIKE, Armani Exchange, and Capcom. Our artists have toured Japan 5 times and collaborated in photo shoots with a handful of fashion brands in Tokyo. Additionally one of our donates proceeds to Ovarian Cancer Canada to raise awareness about the ills of that illness.

What inspired you to become an entrepreneur? Describe both your greatest achievements and biggest challenges.

Inspiration to become an entrepreneur came from various trips back and forth from New York to Japan to push my own personal brand of music and art while growing more as a human being in general. Being able to set my own rules and build my own creative ideas attracted me to the entrepreneurial lifestyle. I love the idea of controlling my own destiny and many times the rewards for being an entrepreneur eclipse any of the risks that come with this lifestyle.Some of my greatest achievements were making music for NIKE Japan, performing a live show for Armani Exchange Kobe (Japan), and landing a music placement on the 25th Anniversary box set of Capcom’s second best-selling franchise “Street Fighter.”
The biggest challenge at times is indeed finances. A lot of times ideas are stifled by the lack of finances to pay for the best resources and services to bring that same idea to life.

How is your business involved with the community you serve? Examples include: giving back to the community, sourcing locally, and/or contributing to economic development via hiring.

The community we serve is both locally, here in NY and internationally (notably Canada and Japan).Locally we provide a safe and private space for young creatives to create and record music. Currently we service over 5 different (local) towns worth of young recording artists in addition to servicing some artists from the 5 boroughs of New York. I often share my expertise in music business and music marketing with the youth in order to help them to succeed in hitting their personal goals faster.
Internationally, we have volunteered in Times Square New York, back in 2012 for “Love Save Japan” where we collected donations and MC’d the event to assist the Japan Lions Club of NY and Bond and Justice Japan with charity efforts for the Japanese Tsunami Tragedy. We also created the “Domo Arigato” Festival that same year which donated funds to Japan’s Tsunami relief efforts via The Japan Society of NY.

Additionally, one of the albums we created donates some of its proceeds to Ovarian Cancer Canada to bring awareness to the seriousness of ovarian cancer.

What would a $100,000 grant mean to your business and how will you utilize the funds? Please be as specific as possible.

Currently we rent the bottom floor of a 2 story building and with this grant, we would be able to rent out the top floor to run an after school program for high school students. We will reach out to 2 local high schools, to get 10 students in total for our after school program. We would teach the students, music production, video production and graphic design. Funding would allow us to create a positively stimulating work environment for students in addition to obtaining the right staff and volunteers to take them to another level artistically.The after school program needs brand new equipment such as 10-15 desks, 10-15 pairs of KRK monitors, 10-15 sub-woofers, 20 Sennheiser Headphones, wires galore, 10-15 Canon cameras for video, 10-15 new iMac/Apple computers, 10-15 MPK 49 keyboards, 10-15 Akai APC40 pads, the Ableton Live software license., The Propellerhead Reason Software (license), Protools Software, Adobe Creative Suite (software includes Photoshop, Illustrator & more), and Final Cut Pro (video editing software).
We would upgrade 4 pieces of equipment on the 1st floor in our main music studio to allow for A+ record quality.

What are your short-term (1-2 years) and long-term growth plans for the business? How will this grant contribute to your plan?

The short term goal for MANAFEST VISION MEDIA LLC. is to finish adding the proper equipment to our music studio to make it one of the best private recording studios in NY. Secondly, we look forward to starting the after school program for high school students to teach them digital media (music production, graphic design and video editing).Our long term goal is to build up our music studio to ideally offer our service to artists from all over the world to come to NY and record with us. We have our eye on quite a few Japanese pop artists from Tokyo as we speak.
Secondly, we foresee our after school program becoming an international exchange program where 10 students from oversees join our 10 local students for 1-2 weeks to work on art and digital media after school at our studio (on the second floor). International collaborations are indeed the future for us!