Built From the Business Owner's Side of the Table

HYER Studios is a San Diego digital agency built by people who have run businesses of their own. We know that good work counts for very little if it does not move the business forward.

We design, build, market and grow companies. Websites, SEO, digital marketing, paid ads, branding, e-commerce, app development, email and SMS, photography and video, product development, and the ongoing support that keeps it all running.

But our story did not start with an agency. It started on the other side of the table.

Before we were an agency, we were the client

Long before HYER Studios existed, founder Brian Esper was building and running businesses of his own.

In December 1996, Brian worked with his parents to reopen Frends Beauty, a professional beauty supply store in North Hollywood, California. The business had been closed for about four years. Its history went back to 1940, and before it closed it had become a destination for makeup artists, hairstylists, special effects artists and entertainment professionals across Los Angeles.

Brian saw a chance to bring that back, and to take it further than it had been before.

After reopening, Frends Beauty became a trusted stop again for professionals working with some of the biggest names in television and film, including Sony, Disney, Warner Bros., ABC, Nickelodeon and Universal Studios. Artists came into the North Hollywood store or had orders delivered straight to the lots where they were working.

But the opportunity was bigger than Los Angeles.

In 2000, Brian started putting Frends Beauty online, so artists who could not walk into the store could still get the same products wherever they were working.

What had been a Los Angeles destination could now reach customers across the United States, and later England, Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Germany and India.

Instead of opening more stores, Frends Beauty grew digitally.

That changed how Brian saw technology and marketing for good. The internet was not just another place to advertise. It could change the size and reach of a whole business.

From retail to e-commerce to international growth

As Frends Beauty grew, it moved beyond the store and the website.

The company started exhibiting at professional beauty events across California, New York, Las Vegas, Chicago, Washington D.C., Texas, Florida and Tennessee. That grew further, to Toronto, Vancouver, Sydney, London, Berlin and Paris.

Those years gave Brian something you cannot learn at a desk: face time with customers, retailers, brands, manufacturers and competitors, in market after market, watching what people actually bought and why.

They also opened another door. Instead of buying every product through distributors, Brian began working directly with manufacturers around the world, building products around what artists were actually asking for.

That led to another business.

From selling products to manufacturing them

Stilazzi started as a curated set of professional beauty products. Some were proven best sellers. Others filled gaps that existing brands were not serving well.

The company designed and manufactured professional makeup brushes, false lashes, organiser bags, rolling cases, tools, colour cosmetics and other products made for working artists.

The idea was simple: professional quality, designed with intent, at a price people could actually pay.

Stilazzi caught on quickly and ended up stocked by major professional beauty retailers around the world.

Other ventures followed, and each one taught something new. Building websites. Managing stock. Developing products. Working with factories. Designing packaging. Watching margins. Running campaigns. Managing people. Exhibiting abroad. Learning customers. Improving conversion. Studying competitors. Running ads. Growing traffic.

Through all of it, the same problem kept coming back. Finding the right agency.

The agency we could never find

Over the years, Brian hired outside companies for SEO, ads, development, content and social media.

Some did good work. Others did not.

Too often the problem was the same. Nobody explained the strategy. The results were hard to read. Communication dropped off once the contract was signed. Sometimes the company selling the work was not the company doing it.

For a small or mid-size business putting real money and trust into an outside partner, that is not a small annoyance. It can decide whether the business grows or stalls.

Most growing companies do not need, or cannot afford, a full in-house team of developers, designers, SEO specialists, ad buyers, writers and strategists. They hire an agency to be that team.

Brian got tired of hoping those relationships would work out. He wanted to understand why something worked, how it worked, how to measure it, and how all the pieces were supposed to fit together.

But the opportunity was bigger than Los Angeles.

So he went deeper. After years of learning on the job, he spent two years taking night classes in SEO, social media marketing, search and social advertising, e-commerce, and conversion rate optimisation.

The goal was not to build a big agency. It was to get better at growing his own businesses, and maybe help a few other companies do the same.

Instead of opening more stores, Frends Beauty grew digitally.

Instead, it became HYER Studios.

The kind of agency we wanted as clients

HYER Studios was founded in 2020 on a simple idea: businesses deserve more from the people they trust with their growth.

More openness. More communication. More accountability. More real expertise. And, when it makes sense, more than one service working on its own with no connection to the rest.

What started small grew through relationships, results, referrals and clients coming back for more.

The company has grown a lot. What we believe has not changed.

We do not want clients wondering what we are doing. We do not want them paying for things they do not understand. And we do not think every business needs the same answer.

We understand business because we still run businesses

We do not only work on other people’s companies. We still run our own.

That means we are still thinking about what it costs to win a customer, about margins, payroll, stock, conversion, suppliers, competitors and growth. We are still making many of the same calls our clients make.

It keeps us close to what running a company actually feels like, instead of seeing a client’s business only through a marketing lens.

When we suggest spending money, we know it is your money. When we suggest changing something that already works, we know the risk. And when we spot an opportunity, we ask whether it makes business sense, not whether it happens to be something we sell.

Marketing decisions are business decisions. Your website is not just a design project. Your SEO is not just a rankings report. Your ads are not just clicks. Your app is not just software.

All of it should add up to something.

What we do

Work that most businesses would otherwise need several agencies, or a full in-house department, to cover.

Web Design and Development

Custom sites built around your brand, your customer, conversion, search visibility and long-term growth.

SEO and Digital Marketing

National and local search strategies for organic visibility, qualified traffic, leads and revenue, across search engines and AI search.

Paid Advertising

Google, Meta and other paid media, aimed at real business outcomes rather than clicks.

Branding and Creative

Brand strategy, visual identity, graphic design, creative direction and campaign development.

E-commerce

Strategy, design, build, migration, optimisation and ongoing support for selling online.

Mobile and Web Apps

Custom iOS, Android and web applications built around a real opportunity, not around the technology.

Email and SMS

Retention work that turns the customers you already have into repeat customers.

Photography and Video

Content for brands, websites, ads, social, e-commerce and product launches.

Product Development

Help from people who have taken physical products from idea through manufacturing, packaging and into market.

Maintenance and Support

A reliable team after the first project is finished.

Experience you can measure

30+

years building and running businesses

26+

years in digital and e-commerce

1,000+

clients served

700+

websites built

20+

apps developed

4,000+

projects completed

8

countries: USA, Canada, England, Israel, Dubai, France, South Korea

Brian Esper

Founder and CEO

Brian is an entrepreneur and digital strategist with around three decades of building, running and growing businesses. His background covers brick-and-mortar retail, international e-commerce, product development and manufacturing, branding, digital marketing and technology.

He spent decades as the business owner hiring agencies before he became the agency owner. That shapes how he approaches client strategy.

He is still hands-on with client strategy at HYER Studios, and still runs businesses outside the agency, which keeps him close to the same decisions our clients are making.

Brielle Esper

Creative Director and Lead Senior Designer

Brielle is a creative director and designer with a habit of seeing where things are going and making something people want to live with when they get there.

She has more than 20 years across beauty, graphic design, colour theory, photography, product development, interiors and fashion merchandising, which gives her an unusually wide view of branding and creative direction.

Her work goes past the surface. She has done product development and formulation, colour and shade development, packaging, campaigns, brand conception, visual identity, website design and production.

That range shapes how she treats a brand: not as a set of separate pieces, but as one world that should feel connected.

Today she leads creative direction and design at HYER Studios, helping clients turn ideas they cannot quite put into words into something that feels like theirs.

Different disciplines. One team.

Having those people in one place matters.

A developer should know what the SEO team needs. A designer should understand conversion. An ad specialist should be able to talk straight to the person building the landing page. A writer should know what customers are actually searching for. A creative director should know where the brand is heading.

And a business should not have to manage five agencies to make one plan work.

Here, those conversations happen inside the same team.

Our work is our proof

Frends Beauty · Beach Cities Dental Group · Door Dorks · The Makeup Show · The Powder Group · GOLDN Beauty

Our clients come to us at different stages and with different problems. Some need a new digital foundation. Others need more traffic, more leads, better conversion, stronger technology, a new brand, or a team that can carry the growth they already have.

Many hire us for one thing. The relationship usually grows from there.

What we believe

Transparency

You should understand what you are paying for.

You deserve to know what we are doing, why, what we are seeing and what we think comes next. Good partnerships are not built by keeping people in the dark.

Accountability

We treat your business like a business, not an account number.

If something is not working, we say so. If we see an opening, we bring it to you.

Continuous improvement

There is always something to make better.

Technology changes, search changes, customers change. We keep testing and learning, because what worked last year is not guaranteed to work next year.

Partnership

We are here to become part of your team.

Our best relationships are not vendor relationships. Both sides talk openly, share ideas, push back on each other and work toward the same goal.

Experience across industries

Working across industries does not make our thinking generic. It does the opposite. It lets us take something that is working in one market and spot the opening in another, which someone who has only ever worked in one industry would never see.

But before we recommend anything, we start by understanding the business in front of us.

Based in San Diego. Built to work everywhere.

HYER Studios is headquartered in San Diego, California, with a team supporting businesses across the United States and internationally.

Our clients range from new startups and owner-run businesses to established companies with complicated digital, creative and e-commerce needs.

Different businesses bring different problems. Our approach stays the same: understand the business before prescribing the fix.

Maybe you have been looking for us

Maybe you need a new website. Maybe you have built a good business but the right leads are not coming in. Maybe your marketing is spread across too many vendors. Maybe you are building an app, launching a product, rebuilding a brand or growing an online store.

Or maybe you have hired agencies before, and this time you want something different.

Tell us where the business is now, where you want it to go, and what is in the way. We will take it from there.