About Sublyme
Manhattan said yes
to Niagara. In 2017.
A Madison Avenue firm flew me in for an interview in 2017. I wanted the work but not the move, so I asked whether it could be done remotely — and they agreed. I have worked that way ever since.
Same arrangement, same standard
Five moments, and none of them involve an office.
The short version is that a New York firm agreed to something unusual and it worked. The longer version explains why an agency with no building answers faster than agencies with one.
Remote is not the compromise. It is the reason we answer.
Nine years of working this way, not a policy written recently. It changes what you get, and not in the ways people usually assume.
Your money pays for a building
Rent, fit-out and a front desk come out of the same budget your project does. The people you meet in the pitch are rarely the people who do the work, and everything routes through an account manager who has to ask someone else.
Your money pays for the work
No lease means the budget goes into tools, licenses and the time to do things properly. You speak to the people building your site, and a question at nine on a Sunday evening does not have to wait for a Monday handover.
No commute, no office hours, no handover
Three separate clients have independently described hearing back instantly and being looked after around the clock. That is not a service level we advertised at them — it is what happens when there is no building to leave and nobody in between.
The best person, not the nearest one
Hiring stops being limited to whoever can drive to an address every morning. The team is spread across North America and chosen for what they are good at, which is how a small agency ends up building a 3D product configurator and a three thousand item catalog in the same year.
A much smaller footprint
No office to heat, light or drive to. It is not the reason we work this way, but nine years of nobody commuting adds up, and for the clients whose own businesses are built on that — solar, recycling, environmental work — it matters that their agency is not undoing it.
One name, and it is the one that replies.
Graham Davidson. Niagara College, top of the class, President's Honor Roll, then a few unpaid months with local firms because that was the fastest way I could learn anything real.
Manhattan came calling in 2017. The job was good and the city was tempting, but Niagara is home — so I countered with remote, and to their credit they took it. Senior Director of Digital Marketing by 2019, running work across North America from a desk in Ontario.
Sublyme came out of that. Nineteen clients later it is football equipment, telecom, home health care, family law, solar, live music, data centers and a private Caribbean estate — and the person who answers your email is still the person who reads it.
Outside of it: traveling with my wife, and a permanent search for reggae nobody has heard yet.
Yes, it is named after the band.
Sublime, with an unnecessary Y. My playlist has been running for years and currently leans heavily on The Movement, Joe Samba and The Elevators. It is on in the background of most of the work on this site.
Three we documented start to finish.
What the problem was, what we did about it, and what changed afterwards — in more detail than a portfolio tile allows.
365 Data Centers
A rapid full rebuild alongside a live advertising program, for a colocation provider where uptime is the product.
Read the case study
Preferred Home Health Care
Fifteen locations across three states, and a recruitment problem that turned out to be a search problem.
Read the case study
XTECH Football Pads
A 3D builder that lets athletes design their own gear, wired into checkout. Traffic tripled.
Read the case studyThe things people ask about how we work.
Answered plainly, including the one about the name.
St. Catharines, in the Niagara Region of Ontario, with a team working remotely across North America. There is no office, and that's deliberate rather than a cost saving.
Since 2017. It started when a Manhattan firm offered a role and agreed to a remote arrangement instead of a relocation — and that arrangement has not changed since.
Small, and deliberately so. The people you speak to are the people who do the work, and there is no account layer in between. That's why clients describe hearing back instantly rather than waiting on a handover.
The opposite. Three separate clients have independently described hearing back instantly and being supported around the clock. Without an office, commutes and opening hours stop being a limit on when somebody can answer.
After the band Sublime, with an unnecessary Y. It was named by someone who spends his spare time hunting down reggae acts nobody has heard of yet, and it stuck.
Nineteen businesses in industries with nothing in common — football equipment, telecom, home health care, family law, solar, live music, data centers, retail software and a private Caribbean estate. The breadth is the point rather than an accident.
Yes. Remote by design means time zones have never been the constraint, and projects have been delivered across North America and further afield.
Ask us something.
A person replies the same day — that is the whole promise, and this page is the reason we can make it.
Or hand us your URL and we will audit it first, so you know what you are dealing with before anyone talks about money.