Conrad Stel is a creative contractor and entrepreneur living in Vancouver, Canada.
After nearly a decade of in-house experience leading creative for B2B, B2C and development companies Conrad started a boutique design agency called Pawn. Today he runs Pawn and operates a series of side businesses from a shared photo studio/office space called Snake Eyes Studio in Abbotsford, BC.
He spends most of his time building brands, websites, and creating new products for established businesses across North America. In the few hours he finds between, he explores new business ideas and passion projects.
PASSION PROJECTS
PAWN DESIGN GROUP
Pawn is a boutique design agency operating in Vancouver, Canada focusing on all aspects of branding and web, it is a full service studio. There Conrad works to reposition brands and elevate ideas with timeless logos, user friendly websites, and award winning packaging.
Dark & Volfram
D&V is a ring company that focuses on two things. Simplicity and value. Conrad and his business partner Adrian set out to sell tungsten wedding rings to the middle class at a better rate than they saw on the market. Most tungsten ring companies today dropship and the business never even holds the ring, while we hold every single one as we package and ship them ourselves, guarunteeing quality and expedient shipping.
BC FREELANCE
BCF is a slack group for freelance designers, photographers and creatives operating in British Columbia. Conrad wanted to meet more like-minded people and learn from others while providing value from my own experiences. The intention was to grow it large enough to host public events and meetups for members as well as share resources but Covid has affected those plans.
SNAKE EYES STUDIO
Snake Eyes Studio is a shared photo space owned by Conrad's long time collaborator Alex Suarez. Together they retrofitted an abandoned dispensery into an office and 650sq.ft. photo studio available for rent on open space. Most days he can be found here working or watching terrible movies on the projector just loud enough for the other offices to hate him, but not loud enough to formally complain.
SUPPORT CANADIAN COFFEE
When Covid-19 struck North America in March 2020 coffee shops across Canada were forced to shut their doors and only provide limited services. A lot of these local spots were posting on social media but it was hard to tell which were still open. Conrad noticed two friends - Lara and Brittany - from his hometown were making a spreadsheet to help consumers figure out what shops were still offering. He approached them and built a website for the information they had gathered to make it more accessable to a wider audience.
DOING CHURCH ONLINE
Similar to the need created by Support Canadian Coffee, Conrad and his friends saw churches shut their doors without any way of moving forwards with the transition to digital only services. Together they designed and built this site in a week to help older churches update their processes and continue to operate using modern technology.
LOVE MY CITY WEEK
In 2018 a friend of approached Conrad and 6 others with an idea to help unite cities in the Tri-Cities outside Vancouver. His idea was to rally people to volunteer to clean local city streets and scrub graveyard headstones amongst other acts of philanthropy. Over the course of their week of events over 1000 people attended. The week ended with a large outdoor concert and had a successful second year sponsored by the likes of CocaCola, Starbucks, and Walmart before going on hiatus through Covid.
HIS TESTIMONY
Conrad has had to overcome a lot of things in his life to get where he is. One of the most difficult being the passing of his father when he was eight. Ronald Paul Stel wrote his testimony on his deathbed, in 2018 Conrad turned his story into a website to encourage others and as a reminder to people to cherish their family.
ALXNDR
Conrad is in a unique situation in that a handful of his closest friends and collaborators all share the name Alexander. One night they joked about combining their agencies to create a shared entity. Thus ALXNDR was born. Although built as a joke, we agreed that if anyone filled out the form we would collaborate on any work that came out of it.
Proverbs & Pints
Proverbs and Pints was a men's bible study concept that Conrad created and successfully hosted for a couple of years. The idea was to bring in local pastors from different churches to each session to speak on a biblical chapter of Proverbs and come with questions to spark discussion over beer that he provided. Conrad is looking to resurrect this ministry in some new way in 2021/2022.
Exploit The Wilderness
Exploit the wilderness was a hiking blog Conrad was super passionate about for a number of years. More than anything he desired to monetize his passion for the outdoors so he would have more reason to spend time in the wild. However he realized that the site could ultimately destroy his love for the outdoors by taking him out of the moment while hiking and create backlash by drawing attention to less popular trails. He still loves the clickbait name he came up with though and the site remains (hidden) so who knows...
BARRE CREATIVE
Conrad worked as the only UX/UI designer for the world's biggest Dance and Cheer Competition software company for a year. During his time there the company was kind enough to hand off any website/design work that they had become too busy for to Conrad on the side. In response Conrad built a simple website to showcase some of his dance industry specific work to help sell his services to that niche. This side company is called Barre Creative.
DISRUPTDOOR
Web App Coming May 2021.
CONTRACT WORK
PHOTOGRAPHY
BLOG AND MOODBOARD
Get 75% OFF On A New Website – Government Grant Opportunity
So Covid hit your business hard and you’ve decided now would be a good time to take your products online.. Or maybe your business has actually been thriving through the last year and you’re looking for an opportunity to expand your online presence. Well thanks to a new BC Government program you could get up to 75% of your new website build covered (up to $7,500.00). “The Launch Online Grant program provides funding to B.C.-based business to create an online shop or an online booking system and/or improve their existing online operations to attract new local customers and expand to new markets. The grant will pay for up to 75% of eligible expenses, up to a maximum of $7,500 per business.” My design agency and I qualify as the type of businesses that can build you the site with everything required to qualify for this grant. Our services include design, development, photography, SEO, and copywriting. Conveniently our e-commerce shop builds have always started at $10,000. If you or someone you know is interested in building a new online store that is either retail, wholesale, or with online booking functionality for a service, please reach out. You can find all of the information and application form here : https://launchonline.ca Pay $2500 instead of $10,000 and be selling product or booking clients in as soon as 12 weeks. Reserve a slot with us and apply asap. These funds won’t last forever.
PASSION PROJECTS
PAWN DESIGN GROUP
Pawn is a boutique design agency operating in Vancouver, Canada focusing on all aspects of branding and web, it is a full service studio. There Conrad works to reposition brands and elevate ideas with timeless logos, user friendly websites, and award winning packaging.
Dark & Volfram
D&V is a ring company that focuses on two things. Simplicity and value. Conrad and his business partner Adrian set out to sell tungsten wedding rings to the middle class at a better rate than they saw on the market. Most tungsten ring companies today dropship and the business never even holds the ring, while we hold every single one as we package and ship them ourselves, guarunteeing quality and expedient shipping.
BC FREELANCE
BCF is a slack group for freelance designers, photographers and creatives operating in British Columbia. Conrad wanted to meet more like-minded people and learn from others while providing value from my own experiences. The intention was to grow it large enough to host public events and meetups for members as well as share resources but Covid has affected those plans.
SNAKE EYES STUDIO
Snake Eyes Studio is a shared photo space owned by Conrad's long time collaborator Alex Suarez. Together they retrofitted an abandoned dispensery into an office and 650sq.ft. photo studio available for rent on open space. Most days he can be found here working or watching terrible movies on the projector just loud enough for the other offices to hate him, but not loud enough to formally complain.
SUPPORT CANADIAN COFFEE
When Covid-19 struck North America in March 2020 coffee shops across Canada were forced to shut their doors and only provide limited services. A lot of these local spots were posting on social media but it was hard to tell which were still open. Conrad noticed two friends - Lara and Brittany - from his hometown were making a spreadsheet to help consumers figure out what shops were still offering. He approached them and built a website for the information they had gathered to make it more accessable to a wider audience.
DOING CHURCH ONLINE
Similar to the need created by Support Canadian Coffee, Conrad and his friends saw churches shut their doors without any way of moving forwards with the transition to digital only services. Together they designed and built this site in a week to help older churches update their processes and continue to operate using modern technology.
LOVE MY CITY WEEK
In 2018 a friend of approached Conrad and 6 others with an idea to help unite cities in the Tri-Cities outside Vancouver. His idea was to rally people to volunteer to clean local city streets and scrub graveyard headstones amongst other acts of philanthropy. Over the course of their week of events over 1000 people attended. The week ended with a large outdoor concert and had a successful second year sponsored by the likes of CocaCola, Starbucks, and Walmart before going on hiatus through Covid.
HIS TESTIMONY
Conrad has had to overcome a lot of things in his life to get where he is. One of the most difficult being the passing of his father when he was eight. Ronald Paul Stel wrote his testimony on his deathbed, in 2018 Conrad turned his story into a website to encourage others and as a reminder to people to cherish their family.
ALXNDR
Conrad is in a unique situation in that a handful of his closest friends and collaborators all share the name Alexander. One night they joked about combining their agencies to create a shared entity. Thus ALXNDR was born. Although built as a joke, we agreed that if anyone filled out the form we would collaborate on any work that came out of it.
Proverbs & Pints
Proverbs and Pints was a men's bible study concept that Conrad created and successfully hosted for a couple of years. The idea was to bring in local pastors from different churches to each session to speak on a biblical chapter of Proverbs and come with questions to spark discussion over beer that he provided. Conrad is looking to resurrect this ministry in some new way in 2021/2022.
Exploit The Wilderness
Exploit the wilderness was a hiking blog Conrad was super passionate about for a number of years. More than anything he desired to monetize his passion for the outdoors so he would have more reason to spend time in the wild. However he realized that the site could ultimately destroy his love for the outdoors by taking him out of the moment while hiking and create backlash by drawing attention to less popular trails. He still loves the clickbait name he came up with though and the site remains (hidden) so who knows...
BARRE CREATIVE
Conrad worked as the only UX/UI designer for the world's biggest Dance and Cheer Competition software company for a year. During his time there the company was kind enough to hand off any website/design work that they had become too busy for to Conrad on the side. In response Conrad built a simple website to showcase some of his dance industry specific work to help sell his services to that niche. This side company is called Barre Creative.
DISRUPTDOOR
Web App Coming May 2021.
CONTRACT WORK
PHOTOGRAPHY
BLOG AND MOODBOARD
Get 75% OFF On A New Website – Government Grant Opportunity
So Covid hit your business hard and you’ve decided now would be a good time to take your products online.. Or maybe your business has actually been thriving through the last year and you’re looking for an opportunity to expand your online presence. Well thanks to a new BC Government program you could get up to 75% of your new website build covered (up to $7,500.00). “The Launch Online Grant program provides funding to B.C.-based business to create an online shop or an online booking system and/or improve their existing online operations to attract new local customers and expand to new markets. The grant will pay for up to 75% of eligible expenses, up to a maximum of $7,500 per business.” My design agency and I qualify as the type of businesses that can build you the site with everything required to qualify for this grant. Our services include design, development, photography, SEO, and copywriting. Conveniently our e-commerce shop builds have always started at $10,000. If you or someone you know is interested in building a new online store that is either retail, wholesale, or with online booking functionality for a service, please reach out. You can find all of the information and application form here : https://launchonline.ca Pay $2500 instead of $10,000 and be selling product or booking clients in as soon as 12 weeks. Reserve a slot with us and apply asap. These funds won’t last forever.
Conrad Stel is a creative contractor and entrepreneur living in Vancouver, Canada.
After nearly a decade of in-house experience leading creative for B2B, B2C and development companies Conrad started a boutique design agency called Pawn. Today he runs Pawn and operates a series of side businesses from a shared photo studio/office space called Snake Eyes Studio in Abbotsford, BC.
Most of his time is spent building brands, websites, and creating new products for established small-to-medium sized businesses across North America. In the few hours he finds between, he explores new business ideas and passion projects.