For the past three years, Steven Anschutz has lived a life built on fabrications. Ask him directly and he’ll admit, “I’m a fabricator.” So he made it his business. “In 16 years of working production on shows,” he recalls, “I noticed we always had to set up using the same gear that we’d used forever. We wanted to do things like mounting speakers directly onto trusses instead of having the separate up-lit truss and speakers on sticks. But there wasn’t a handy bracket out there to do that. There were many situations like that, where we’d be stuck using stock components. The standard manufacturers were not willing to create one-off custom pieces. So I decided to start making them myself.”
In 2011, he and some friends pooled their expertise in audio, theater production, set-building, design, engineering, metalworking and CNC machining. Entertainment Fabrication was born in Plano, Texas.
The company started with two products, a collapsible stand for truss, “so we didn’t have to haul around the giant three-foot base plates anymore,” and a truss speaker mount, “so when we were doing things like a DJ setup with uplighting on either side, instead of having speakers on sticks, we could clean up the whole look by mounting the speakers right onto the side of the truss.” As ideas occurred or customers asked for special items, the company expanded its offerings to include console stands, truss dollies, even commercial art and props, all customizable to customers’ needs. Though it does have stock products it lists and sells on its website, the company shines as a custom fabrication shop for the entertainment industry.
Road Cases, Props and Art Mounts
One area the company specializes in is road cases and racks, all made from either half- or three-quarter-inch cabinet-grade birch plywood. The heavy duty versions have an internal steel frame for extreme durability and a tough textured paint coating that can easily withstand the rigors (and the riggers) of the road. The cases are repairable and can be tailored to customers’ specifications.
“We want to be that place that an average person can come to with an idea,” says Anschutz. “They want to do something out of the ordinary but they’re not finding the right product. We’ll build it for them so they can be creative and maybe do something no one else is doing. Instead of having 15 production companies all providing basically the same services and gear, now they can get that unique product and create their own niche. People have come to us with what I think are brilliant ideas and ways to use equipment that I’d never even thought of. We’ve built them some special pieces that enabled them to fulfill their creative vision.”
For example, for a nearby high school marching band, Entertainment Fabrication built a 13-by-16-foot model of the face of Greece’s Parthenon that easily disassembles and fits in a trailer.
Another example was prompted by the new ubiquity of LED lights. “People want them everywhere in installations,” Anschutz explains, “but there wasn’t an easy way to mount them and make it look really clean. We saw the need for a lightweight bracket that could mount in the ceiling and cover the hole where the power and DMX come through. So we created our drywall light mount, a simple plate with a little threaded stem so you can mount the LED fixture onto it. It attaches with ordinary drywall screws, since the LEDs are so light. You don’t have to come in with a lot of pipe and use a lot more infrastructure and time.
“We created something similar for drop ceilings,” Anschutz continues. “It’s a notched bar of aluminum tubing with some threaded rod on the end of it. Pop a little hole anywhere in your drop ceiling tile, put the mounts through, screw on your light, and you’re done. We’ve sold a lot of those to people who do installs in little start-up churches or small theaters. It’s really quick and easy to put in the lights, and when you’re done with them, just take them right back out without leaving gaping holes.”
CAD and CNC Technology
The company founder recalls a particularly novel and challenging assignment, a commercial art installation on the side of an upscale apartment building in Dallas. “Since we were also doing scenery and props (including Lego-like blocks the size of footlockers), a client asked if we could do this architectural project. It was well within the realm of what we can do, so we told them we’d love to do it.”
The job involved a lot of CAD work and drawings, going out to the site to research how the pieces—colorful aluminum disks up to eight feet tall and very heavy—could be mounted high on a concrete wall, and getting the painting and patinas right. The three-foot sidewalk in front of the wall had a flowerbed on one side of it and a swimming pool on the other. On the day of the installation, a wider scissor lift than expected arrived. Hanging the pieces took some tricky choreography to avoid sinking in the flowerbed or going for a swim, lift and all.
“It was our first large-scale all-aluminum project, and it inspired us to convert some of our other products to aluminum, which doesn’t have to be painted because it doesn’t rust, is lighter weight, and is easier to machine. That all cuts down on the time and expense needed to build and transport a product. We were able to cut the price of our truss speaker mounts in half.”
Computerized numerical control, or CNC, gives the shop Texas-sized capabilities. For the uninitiated, “it’s a piece of machinery that we can program code into, then lay on a sheet of material, and it will cut out the part that we need. Much of what we do is cut out on a CNC plasma table. We put the part on it and it torches out all the holes and notches and everything so we don’t have to do it by hand. It’s more precise, and it doesn’t call in sick! We can go from making a dozen of something in a day to making 50, so it has definitely increased our productivity and speed.”
Rigging Solutions and Rentals
Perhaps the most popular item is the company’s two-foot collapsing base plate. “There are really no other collapsing bases for truss on the market,” Anschutz points out. “The three-foot-by-three-foot standard bases are very hard to maneuver and get into a location, because you can’t get them through a normal 30-inch door and they weigh a hundred pounds. Our two-foot version is collapsible, it only weighs about 50 pounds, and you can easily put a dozen of them in the back of your car.”
Entertainment Fabrication also offers rental items for theater (decks and flats primed and ready to paint, scaffolding, pipes and adapters), film (apple boxes, c-stands, ladders, carts, dollies) and live concert production (truss, rigging, platforms, blackout drape). Because there’s no business like show business, which operates in hours when your usual suppliers might be closed, the company has extended operating hours and 24/7 support. So if it’s 10:30 on a Saturday night and your cases just fell off the truck and need repair or your main mass connection just got run over and you need a new one shipped out overnight, just get on the phone to Plano.
Plano was an obvious choice of location for the Texas native’s business. “In the central industrial district,” Anschutz explains, “we’re close to a few shipping hubs and there are a lot of distributors right there. If we find ourselves needing some random bolt, we can literally walk to any of several places to get it. For getting all the bits and pieces that we need and then getting the product out the door, it’s a great location.” It hasn’t hurt that the shop is about a block from the FedEx World Center. “We’ve had some larger packages that we’ve just put on the forklift and driven over there, without having to set up a pickup and perhaps incurring some extra costs. It’s been very handy for us.”
On the Move
Though Anschutz expects the company to outgrow its current facility in the coming year, he finds that being a smaller company for now has its advantages. “You come up with really clever ways of working around the space limitations. It makes us move products through more quickly, which is better for our customers. Though we might like to take two or three weeks on a project while working on others and building inventory, instead we’ll turn it around in a week because we need the space.”
In talking with Anschutz, one can sense his dedication to his work, to creating the best products possible with exclusively American-made components, and to ensuring the customer’s complete satisfaction. He seems to embody the maxim “think globally, act locally.” He’s a businessman, certainly, but there’s more to it than that. “We love selling our products,” he says, “and of course, we hope to grow and get larger clients and a larger client base. But being in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, there are 160 high schools within an hour’s drive from us. We’ve seen a huge need in their entertainment-related programs for help. Some of these schools don’t have a big shop, so we go in and help them get flats or decks or whatever they might need and, at the same time, give the students a little bit better education. Whenever you can help your local high school and know that the students coming out know more because you’ve helped and know that these are the people you’re going to be working with in a few years, it’s really another level of satisfaction than you get from shipping out a pallet of stands.” And that’s no fabrication.
Company Snapshot:
Entertainment Fabrication, Inc.
Founder: Steven Anshutz
Year Founded: 2011
Company Goal: To provide custom and flexible products and solutions that tackle old problems in a new way.
Address: 1308 Capital Ave., Plano, TX 75074
Phone: 214.509.8598
