This month, I continue on my quest to figure out which gear has the best return for a lighting company investment. Is it as easy as following the old “Supply and Demand” way of thinking? I always assumed that a lighting company chose what fixtures they would purchase based on what the customer’s latest needs were. But what if you did many shows each year with various LD types, and they all want different fixtures? Do the lighting buyers choose to base their decisions on the latest, coolest moving heads in the business? Or do they buy from certain manufacturers because they have good, lasting relationships with them and their salespeople?
To me, it’s a tough decision. A large percentage of my business has to do with concert touring. Concert tours pay less for a weekly rental price than any other events, for two basic reasons: The gear may stay out for several months without having to be serviced, and there is no downtime where the lights are sitting on a shelf not generating any revenue. So it’s a no-brainer that certain companies who are involved in the touring business buy a multitude of different lights. If they can rent a fixture for 3 percent of what they paid for it per week, that fixture and its relative, cable and power, should be paid off in a year.
» Investing in Infrastructure
It wasn’t until I sat down with Elliot Krowe the other night that I realized that he has a whole different mentality in the way he runs BML-Blackbird. Seven years ago, Elliot joined forces with Shelly Diamond and Eric Todd (the original BML owner) to create a company with a powerful client base. He realized that the majority of his work would be local events in the New York metro area, an area famous for having the most-travelled, worst-kept roads in the country. So as his company grew over the years, Elliot had to decide the best way to re-invest his revenue for his location. And he made a wise move. He invested in infrastructure. I asked him to elaborate on this.
“Every year, moving lights change, and people want to use something new. Now, don’t get me wrong, because BML-Blackbird owns 250 moving lights, but we are careful to purchase items that we know will be in constant demand and handle the rigors of New York City. [Martin] MAC Auras and Clay Paky Sharpys are one example. We are looking at [MAC] Vipers now. But what we are really dependent on is the stuff needed to make a fixture work. Next to PRG, we probably own more dimmers and AC distros than anyone else in our region. Copper wire, we invest in tons of that.” Truss and motors don’t change that much. Sure, he bought the latest intelligent trusses because they were a time-saving necessity for the kinds of events his company does. So when it comes to supplying the actual light fixtures, they are the sub-rental kings.
His lighting company is located in New Jersey, just a tunnel’s length from downtown Manhattan. There are several other large lighting companies located in the same little neck of the city. Each company has their own customers and, apparently, there is enough work to go around in the Big Apple to keep everyone afloat.
Krowe gets calls from other companies constantly to rent his infrastructure materials. Dimmer rental and copper wire can be a good source of income by itself.
But Krowe looks to all sorts of places for his moving light inventory. Many of his fixtures come directly from Main Light Industries, the large rental house not far from Jersey’s southern border in Delaware. But he points out that he constantly sources lights from 4Wall and Starlite Productions as well.
“But what happens if you are on a long show and some of these fixtures break?” I inquire. I mean, someone else owns them, but they have to be fixed, should they fail to work. I wanted to know, who picks up that tab? Elliot cuts a deal with his vendors where he always gets a few spares of each fixture included. If it’s a long show or a tour, for example, he will get a spares kit of parts together based on what the crew chief deems necessary. He may have the parts already at his shop, or he may ask the rental company to supply them. At the end of the project, he will return the spares and pay for any of the missing parts that were utilized from the inventory.
BML-Blackbird provides gear on upwards of 600 events per year. The majority of them are one-day shows with a few days to load in, if they’re lucky. But sometimes he’s not so fortunate, and that is when his guys really step up to the plate. “We pride ourselves in the way we prep our gear to the extent that we pull off huge one-day events. We have a Korean show that loads six trucks of lights into the Garden, then sets up, programs, executes the show and the load out, all in 24 hours time.” But what amazes me is that this company has a staff of 65 people permanently employed. Yet only about 10 of these are full-time technicians who work all these shows. “We have a few great guys who know all the nuts and bolts to everything we own. They figure out what they need, gear-wise, for a show, and then we pull guys out of our freelance pool. There is no shortage of decent techs in New York.”
While BML has an in-house lighting repair department, the constant sub-rental of fixtures can save them valuable time. Because of the companies’ volume of events, there’s a huge daily turnover in gear. With good sub-rental fixtures, there’s less stuff for the techs pulling the show to concern themselves with. It makes common sense that the other companies constantly sub-renting them instruments keep the lights in pristine form. The well-traveled roads in weather-beaten New York have never been in great shape, and that will never change. The beating a lighting system can get in a Ryder truck driving just 10 miles to an uptown theater can be cruel. But if you talk to some of their techs, they just shrug. Re-seating dimmer modules, putting connectors back on the capacitors of certain moving lights before they fire them up is a “gimme.” You still have to reattach PAR porcelains and screw back in the Jarag light bulbs every load-in, but they know that. The crew doesn’t get upset just because something “worked in the shop” 10 miles ago. They’ve adapted to their terrain, and they know how to fix things quickly.
Despite the multitude of shows that come out of his shop, “the touring biz has always been good to me, and I would certainly like to do more of them,” Elliot states. Understandably. Krowe cut his teeth as the LD for Aerosmith back in 1975. He traded in the road for a desk early on and worked at See Factor for an eternity as an account rep of his own and Bob See’s right-hand man. See Factor was the cutting edge in touring systems back in the 1970s and 1980s. It’s hard not to miss those days. “But things come and go. Seven years ago, I got a chance to work with some great guys and own a piece of my own company, to change some stuff around to my way of thinking. I ran with it and never looked back.”
