Coal Creative was initially formed as an opportunity to freelance the design and development of Websites here in Wilkes-Barre, PA. Through collaborations with the Wilkes Barre Chamber of Commerce and other notable local businesses, opportunities continued to arise. This led our founder Gerard Durling to send out a job posting on social media.
Our Lead Designer and Developer Matt Simoncavage will be the first to tell you that he was the first official employee of Coal Creative. In fact, when we asked him for a quote for this blog he started with: “Being the first employee at Coal Creative gave me a front row seat in witnessing our growth and expansion. When I started here 4 years ago, I worked with our founder, Gerard, to manage the social media and website for just one client on a part-time basis.”
Today, Coal is home to a full team of creative individuals in multiple departments managing a whole suite of clients. “My job has grown into a full-time role leading both the design and the web development departments” Matt continued.
As work continued to grow, Travis was brought on as a Junior Developer. While his job initially only entailed the coding of websites, his work ethic, creativity and commitment propelled him to his current position as Web Developer. Travis celebrated his one year anniversary at Coal Creative in January,2020. “The past year I’ve been so happy to work alongside some of the most creative and driven people I’ve ever met. It has also brought me joy to help individuals use modern tools to help spread the word about their ideas, causes or products.” Travis said.
If you visit our HQ in downtown Wilkes-Barre, you may hear Travis happily guiding a client through a technical question, or working with Matt to solve a complex problem. “It’s been so fun connecting with our clients at an individual level and helping them realize their goals. I think that usually when I find that I’m the happiest, when I’m helping people. I get to do that in a unique way at Coal Creative.”
As Coal Creative continues to grow as a team, and furthermore as a company, we couldn’t be happier to celebrate the growing Design and Development team. If you trace our roots, a major catalyst to our growth was 4 years ago when Matt Simoncavage walked out of the elevator on the 6th floor of the Luzerne Bank Building, wearing a suit for his interview.