Fabricating unique & creative solutions for the live event industry
From custom to clever, Entertainment Fabrication is building solutions to solve your production problems. It began when Steven Anschutz wasn’t satisfied with stock solutions for production work—and not finding companies who wanted to produce one-off custom pieces—he decided to start making them himself. This all resulted in creating Entertainment Fabrications [Ent Fab] in 2011 and the company was on its way. Or was it? Around the time of Ent Fab’s 10-year anniversary, the country was in the middle of a pandemic lockdown, and Anschutz took this pause to closely look at his business model and wisely decided to pivot.
What began as going into survival mode through the pandemic, has created a stronger company today; one which some in the industry have eagerly embraced thanks to a particular strength of the company in today’s market. To meet their customers’ needs and requirements, Ent Fab can provide a range of unique manufacturing solutions to produce small batch custom work, or larger production runs all from its Dallas shop. Need something customized or have your logo routed into the base of a truss dolly so you can easily track your gear? Ent Fab can do that. Anschutz would like more people to know about Ent Fab and the range of the company’s unique production solutions they can bring to bear on their needs and requirements.
Roots in Production
Around 2009, Anschutz started working freelance on shows and productions. “I had a decade of positions at several mega-churches as well as at a local performing arts center,” he says. “I was seeing a lot of beat-up road cases, needing to be replaced; crews putting together makeshift adaptors from ratchet straps and gaff tape; as well as over-engineered brackets that did one thing but couldn’t easily adapt to changes in touring venues; and people complaining that certain things didn’t exist. I always enjoyed trying to solve problems in CAD, and since I was working on a mechanical engineering degree, I thought I might take on a challenge or two. So in 2011 I started Entertainment Fabrication. I wanted it to be a place to develop new and innovative brackets and adapters, a way to prototype ideas with some of my production friends; just see if any of our really slick ideas worked and if we could make them happen.”
Ent Fab, which at the time consisted of Anschutz and a friend from theater, started out building some useful products to fill gaps—a collapsible base plate for truss that could be leveled on uneven ground; a way to easily mount speakers to truss; and a road case that was heavy duty and more versatile than a lot of what was out there at the time. “But not being salespeople, the products never got much traction,” Anschutz notes. “We both had a theater background though and had a lot of connections to directors and shows, so we started building scenery and custom staging. As shows used a lot of similar components, we decided it would be more efficient to rent the stock components to save time and help clients manage costs. One thing led to another, and suddenly we were renting staging, scaffolding, sound, automated rigging, and other infrastructure for events. Having a whole shop at the disposal of a rental company was also a huge selling point to clients. We could quickly and cost effectively build any size or shape of stage needed. It was really a comprehensive and quality set of services being offered.”
Back to the Core Business
The scenic and staging work peaked during the holiday season of 2017, and Anschutz felt that they had strayed too far from the original core of their passion. He wanted to return the focus of Ent Fab back on product solutions. So, they scaled down the rental side by streamlining their offerings and invested in new manufacturing equipment. They have continued to innovate and revise the product lineup. “Over the next few years Ent Fab continued to grow, our products were starting to look much more refined, and they were really starting to sell at quantities we hadn’t seen before,” explains Anschutz. “And then Covid hit. Suddenly we found ourselves with no work and a shop full of manufacturing equipment. A few orders were put on hold, and like many others in the industry, all the momentum we had generated quickly came to a halt. We moved to consolidate into one space and set up our equipment to start doing whatever shop jobs and subcontracted manufacturing we could find. It had a slow start, but soon companies saw that not only could we turn out a quality product, but we also had quick turnaround times. Being able to get parts in one to two weeks was really important to some clients that were currently waiting four to six weeks for deliveries. We were also reducing the number of vendors they had to use since we were doing the machining, welding, painting, powder-coating, and assembly all in-house; often taking on jobs other companies didn’t want because they required uncommon processes. But we seized the opportunity to put our combined creative skills to the task and were able to come up with some really great solutions.”
Hard Decision to Pivot
As entertainment started to open back up early 2021, contracts and sales came flooding in. “Everyone was doing smaller, outdoor shows—which is what we had been specializing in for a number of years,” points out Anschutz. “Also, outsourcing was starting to become a real issue for some companies. For the first time we had to turn down work because now our small team was swamped—between maintaining the rental side and the manufacturing work. Also, we couldn’t find the right people to bring on. In December of ‘21, the tough decision was made to close down the rental side of Ent Fab and focus on our products, innovation, and other strategic manufacturing contracts.”
They did want to make sure they weren’t leaving any of their longtime loyal customers high and dry, so it was a bit of a slow process. Anschutz describes, “We are continuing to serve clients that have been with us forever while we try to find the right companies to sell everything off to, but the shift in focus has really turned out to be a great decision. The additional work in other industries has allowed us to get equipment far better than we would ever need, or be able to reconcile, for just our own products. We are investing in top brands like Omax waterjet machines, DMG Mori machining centers, and Amada press brakes. Not only are other industries able to benefit from our rapid turnaround times, our wide range of capabilities, and our unique approach to manufacturing, but the live event industry is also getting products made quicker, more precise, and often at lower prices than Ent Fab was able to do before. As Ent Fab continues to grow, we are embracing as much new technology and automation as we can. This allows for a small team of talented people to run lots of parts on multiple machines at a time and not get tied down doing small, time-consuming, repetitive tasks. Our machining centers are getting pallet pools; router tables get automatic in/out feeds; and most of the welding is moving to robotic cells.”
Ent Fab is focused on looking forward to continuing to bring excellence to the live event industry. “This industry is still our primary focus, and we enjoy being able to help bring additional manufacturing back to the USA,” concludes Anschutz. “Whether you’re an OEM or a production company, we aren’t just building our own products; we are here to help the industry. Let us know what you need, and we will put our skills to work for you.”
Learn more at www.entfab.com
