Celebrating 20 Years of Service with a Retirement

Today, I’m announcing my Analog-to-Digital Conversion Services shutdown. After twenty years, two major moves, countless media converted, tens of thousands in annual revenue, and hundreds of positive customer interactions, we have come to the end of our journey! Read on...

Since I first hung my shingle for my Analog-to-Digital Conversion Services (as a side-hustle of my sole proprietorship graphic design firm Under Design) way back in 2005, I’d been graced with a steady stream of online conversion orders and weekly work from around the country. Dutifully using my college film/video degree paired with my turntable DJ career along with decades of experience in web design, print design, and media handling and remastering, I delightfully found early success in a large market of competitors offering similar services due to my high-caliber results, professional online presence and friendly customer service.

As I got familiar with the industry, I rolled out new conversion services to accommodate my customer’s media requests, and offer my wisdom with automation of tedious audio and video media library cultivating and optimizing. I quickly added Cassette Tapes, VHS Video, Reel-to-Reel, CD Ripping, and more analog formats as I could find working playback devices and available domains!

Early Success

At our height, I owned thirteen different .us domain names all capturing USA-based SEO attention and traffic - see my inset list. I was fortunate enough to have enough digital conversion business (and some very large bulk orders) to hire my good friend (and fellow Pratt Grad) Susannah Thurlow as part-time help for eight years through 2017 - my meager side-hustle maturing into a legitimate business with real employees!

In 2017, I lost my huge center city Rittenhouse location of 19 years due to the building's sale, and quickly moved my office a few blocks away to the Washington Square West Neighborhood. The Locust St. office served me well until the Covid-19 Pandemic in 2020 really forced me to cut all extraneous costs - especially retail rent when no one can shop retail! Relocating this business and it's associated equipment to my West Philly home in 2020 and allowing appointment-only customer visits allowed me to survive the Pandemic, distancing myself from Covid-19 while culling my monthly costs.

It wasn't until mid 2022 that I began to note full work weeks with massive gaps in my Upcoming Job Queue. I’d written the disinterest and lack of incoming orders as 'slow business weeks', 'post-pandemic recession', or lack of consumers 'mad-spending-money', not the attrition of my business that it truly was.

As of this year, I'm lucky if I get a single conversion job a week, and offering discount online sales only nets enough for a few days worth of work. In the ensuing years, a new consumer generation has matured on the internet that doesn't own (or play) the media I support, nor need the services I offer with endless Spotify subscriptions. This new consumer doesn't step outside their gated Facebook and Instagram gardens to the wild web, and allows Google to mold their education and focus. This wilting business division is no longer making me income, but seemingly stealing my attention.

Chart of Income going Down Down Down...

It is with great disappointment (and some long-overdue relief) that I’m formally announcing the retirement of my Audio+ Conversion Services division in 2025. This side-hustle will have hit its two decade anniversary, and can respectfully retire mission accomplished with a longer lifespan than most small businesses (if not on life support at the end there...). Announcing this on my 55th Birthday only reinforces that steady march of time. The last day of regular business will be Friday, January 3rd, 2025, marking our 20th Year of Service.

Retirement: Quarter-time for Quarter-effort

Many conversion services will be closed completely, mostly due to attrition: Minidiscs, Microcassettes, Reel-to-Reels, CD to MP3, DAT to CD, DVD to MP4, and Audio to Vinyl, all of which have gotten nearly zero submissions in the last year. In the interest of maintaining long-tail sales and satiating my devoted repeat customers with continued service, I will be maintaining the following services until my equipment finally gives up the ghost: Vinyl Records and Cassette Tapes. Having come full circle, with our first set of conversion services seemingly becoming our last, too. We'll switch to default delivery of MP3 digital files (unless you pay extra for the soon-to-be-extinct 5" Optical Media) and a new online shopping cart checkout starting the day of retirement, along with new lower rates due to the lower overhead costs.

As for my online presence, many of my current *.us domains will expire at the end of their annual subscriptions (some already have), and all web traffic redirected to their custom media landing page on this site (hopefully gaining misplaced SEO boosts). We'll archive our old *.us sites as portfolio pieces of our web design. I'll also be culling my usual Tuesday-Friday office hours to Fridays only, from 12 noon until 6pm. As this service only earns 3.5% of my income, so shall it receive that in attention (outside of automated email replies). Much of my customer communication has been scripted and automated, so I can focus my one day a week on providing professional remastering services, and less answering emails and managing orders. You can still order online and pay with a credit card or mail in our order form with a check.

What's next for Under Design?

I'm going to maintain my favored four-day work week of my creative businesses. (The other three days a week are for my Real Estate Development Business). I've resurrected my once-dormant graphic design skills and found mild success by establishing highly focused casual fashion lines using print-on-demand service providers. The income from these have grown well past any Audio+ Conversion income from the last few years, and I really appreciate the passive income streams of my most popular designs month after month.

My fashion lines include Jawn.us, Initials.Love, FamousFirstNames.com, and RailwayFan.Club. I have other lines under development and am looking to expand my offerings worldwide to leverage my universal designs to an international audience. While we've retired our Analog 2 Digital Blog, we continue to blather on our personal site (wait, that's right here!) and will continue to post new content until boredom or death strikes (whichever arrives first!). To be saved the repeat visits, subscribe to our RSS feed or follow me on BlueSky.