Crewing companies look to 2012 and beyond

“It was a lot more predictable in the old days, you just had to keep your eyes and ears open,” Paul Ward, owner of Birmingham stalwarts, Stagecraft, remembers.

“We had a monopoly in the Midlands. Now there are lots of pirates saying ‘I can do it better than he can’, and cutting corners. The likes of AEG, Live Nation, Kilimanjaro and 3A are brilliant to work for, but not everyone is like that, and Mickey Mouse crews put health and safety in jeopardy. They are more concerned with ‘sorting people out’ than getting the job done properly.

“The faces may change, but our standards don’t,” Ward continues, having promised to reveal all the damning, drug dealing detail in his autobiography one day. “We spend a lot of time training our new recruits and encouraging them to be a part of the team.

“We don’t go down to London at all now,” he adds. “Stage Miracles is more than capable of looking after things there. I don’t like stepping on other people’s toes unless a production manager insists on it. There’s nothing better than the friendships you make in this industry, and build up over the years, that’s why I got involved in the first place.”

Twenty years ago, Miracles, Showforce and Showstars provided for capital rock ‘n’ roll ventures, while Gallowglass was there for corporate events. Today, there are around 100 crew companies in London alone. Gallowglass Managing Director Nick Grecian says “A lot of them offer everything, then fail to make any investment to deliver. But that’s the way of the world.”

“We’re beholden to the economy, and I think 2012 will lift us all up by the collar. All sorts of events want to be associated with the Olympics. It’s a lovely big highlight on the horizon.”

Nick Grecian, Gallowglass Managing Director

“Start up crewing companies will want 2012 on their CVs,” Grecian says, “but Gallowglass is a sustainable business, and it’s imperative for us to look after existing clients first. We’re already signing up to three to five year contracts, guaranteeing our rates.”

One time Gallowglass crew chief Michael Collins is a good example of a breakaway looking beyond the short term. He and Ryan Wepener left Affinity to set up Urban Crew in 2009, making substantial investment in IT infrastructure, enabling clients to log in any time to see their own jobs, the individuals allocated, along with quotes and invoices, to telling dividend. The company counts IMG UK Arts and Entertainment, Family, Event Concept and Stella Vista on its client list, providing for the RHS Hampton Court Flower Show, elements of Fashion Week, and putting the ad screens around the pitch at Twickenham and Wembley, among much more.

“We had 2012 in mind when we started, and we were conscious we would need two or three years to get it all going,” Collins says. “As we get there, I think companies will need to almost double their staff number. Certainly we’re looking at 50 to 60, up from 30. As long as you have a core of experience you’ll be OK. It’s not that technical a job, by and large, but it’s a slow process developing a good team. Pound notes are the bottom line, and we pay really well. We make no money from the crew chiefs, they get what the client gives us for them, because they are so valuable. These are all freelancers, they can go and work for anyone, but we have engendered a sense of loyalty. We do a summer party and a Christmas party, and we have great clothing, which all helps.” As its name implies, Urban Crew is a strictly London-based agency, while Crewsaders operates nationwide, with offices in Bristol and Manchester coming on stream in 2008 and 2009 respectively, the company’s turnover more than doubling in the process. A Scottish base is set to open in January.

“It’s helped to build awareness, and it means people don’t just have to rely on our Birmingham and London outlets,” managing director Jeremy Berryman says. “We’re doing a lot of relationship stuff, communicating with clients, checking everything was OK before invoicing. September was Crewsaders’ busiest month on record, 150 percent up on 2009. “And that’s a product of relationship marketing,” Berryman adds firmly.

“There are golden rules regarding perception. It’s about how we behave in front of the production company, the venue and the client.”

Jeremy Berryman, Crewsaders Managing Director

Beyond Good And Evil

“Competition is good”, often precedes “but the other guys are crap” inference, and naturally enough, crewing specialists are loathe to lose clients, particularly to the cheapskates who promise but don’t deliver. It’s not even a process that necessarily sends them running back to the proven predecessors; it just seems to make for more toil.

“There are so many companies starting up, and it means you can be competing against silly prices. We deliver real value for money, but if you’re resolutely inflexible about your rates, you can be turning business away,” Oliver Pitman of Pitman’s People explains.

“We’ve had guys work for us for two or three years and more though, and clients want that continuity. In 2011, we’re going to take people on full time for the benefits of familiar faces. We pay weekly, we pay well and we’re going to need experience for 2012.”

In business since 2004, Pitman’s People had the best May on record this year, and since then each month has comfortably outstripped its 2009 counterpart, to the extent that the recruiting process has already started. Although some of it may not register with British employment figures.

“We’re benefiting from the festive period and we’ve got funds now for new vehicles next year and to push our branding, which is something we’ve never really done. But the market in this country is only so deep, and I think I’m going to have to look abroad for experienced marquee riggers next year,” Pitman nods.

“We’ve got new clients and old clients doing new business,” he adds. “The structures companies we work with have been very busy. Normally, after the second week in August, it goes dead, but that’s not happened this year. We’re out to go from 20 to 40 to 60 per cent of our clients’ work rather than pitching for new business, and that’s going well.”

“In 2008/2009 it was tough,” Heath Freeman, managing director at Pinnacle, says. “We didn’t lose clients, but their workload was halved, they were forced to under man some jobs as budgets were slashed, and we had to make changes as we tried to save them, and us, some money. Now though, they’re busy again, and our workload is up 30 per cent, with a large number of new clients too.

“A couple of companies have come in from the States as start ups in the UK market, and we’ve partnered with them, which is a real development. They’re talking about a labour partner rather than simply a preferred supplier, so we’re excited about that. Jobs put on hold have come back too, and there’s a greater amount of international work. We’ve always wanted to be more than just strong hands on site. There’s a lot of technical skill here, and I think production teams in France for instance, thought, ‘If we take a handful of Pinnacle crew, they can cope with a lot more than twice the number of locals’.

“Increasingly, our crew chiefs are micro managing some of the smaller things on site,” Freeman continues. “These guys do 100 jobs a year, so they have a good idea of what works and what doesn’t work. That message is gradually getting through, that these guys can really be a part of the production, which makes for a much more cohesive group.”

In business for more than 20 years, Showforce has grown from the East End of London, across Europe and into the Middle East. And managing director Mark Campbell has similarly upbeat tales from across the Channel.  

“We had 70 guys a day in Paris for Imagination’s Canon Expo, one of the biggest jobs we’ve done,” he tells Access. “It went on for the best part of a month. Paris is so dear for labour, you pay 35 euros an hour for French crew, so it works out cheaper to send our guys across on Eurostar and put them up in a reasonable hotel.

“There was an upsurge in April/May over here too,” Campbell says. “Since then, we’ve been flat out, we’ve literally had nobody left. Some people look at crew as the bottom of the chain, but these guys can turn their hands to many things, and we pay them good money. We train everyone in house, then we’ll put one or two new people in a team of 10, and let the crew chief take them under his wing. You can’t beat learning on the job.

“Clients ask for our guys by name,” he adds. “Production managers come to know them and trust them. We’ve got crew chiefs running local teams as far away as Libya.”

Based in Stratford, with the opening and closing ceremonies in Athens 2008 notched on its ‘done’ list, Showforce should be a shooin for London 2012. But, like the competition, clients come first.

“Of course we’d like to be involved, but our first priority is always our existing customers,” Campbell says. “We’ve been in the business for 20 years, we’d like to be here for another 20, and you don’t achieve that by selling anybody short. Saying that, lots of them have tendered for work at the Olympics, and we’d hope to be involved if they get a contract.”

With the Pope’s visit, Titanic: The Artefact Exhibition, and the Brits among its big contracts, on the heels of the likes of V Festival Chelmsford and The Hop Farm, another of the originators, Showstars, has also seen business gradually increasing this year.

“September and October [2010] were really busy, which is unusual,” managing director Graham Shaw tells Access.

A focus on smaller clients a couple of years ago paid dividends, forging an opportunity for greater things as they grew bigger.

“We’re doing some quite large things for new, smaller clients as well,” he says. “There haven’t been so many big tours recently, but we’re hoping to be involved with the Take That shows next summer. We’ve done 99 per cent of the stages since Wembley reopened, and we work there as site crew as well, for the promoters and directly for the stadium.

 “The 2012 shadow is magnetic, and there are a lot of new crewing companies out there, two started up in London this week,” Shaw adds. “But the sponsors will come to town, so there should be a lot of ancillary work before, and hopefully beyond, the Games. I’m cautiously optimistic.”