There are many people–okay, most–who will say that nothing good came out of the disco era. Jay Rabbitt just might beg to differ, since he spun a late-'70s DJ gig into ownership of a sound company in Doylestown, Pa. "We stopped doing the DJ stuff about 15 years ago, but that's how it all started," Rabbitt explains. "In 1980 I moved to Atlanta, and we've been here for 25 years." When Rabbitt opened the doors to his sound company in 1980, it was under the In Concert Productions moniker, and he was solely an audio provider. His first shows ran the gamut from two-speaker party affairs to small music festivals around town where he handled everything. "I was doing Front of House, and I would have someone help with monitors or lights or whatever. We all wore a bunch of hats back in those days–it would be myself and one other guy in a truck and we'd do it all. I miss those times," he admits. "I hate being chained to a desk and running a business, but that's what it's turned into for me. Occasionally I get to go to a show and project manage or something, but mostly I'm handling the business issues now. I do miss it, a lot."
Not only has his role in the company changed, so has the company. One of the first moves was turning In Concert Productions into ICP, which came as the company's client base grew. "We changed it when we started getting more into the corporate work," Rabbitt explains. "In the corporate world, the word concert seemed to say that we didn't know how to do corporate. It's funny now, because I'm seeing more and more rock companies get into corporate work."
The second change came when the company added staging, lights and backline to its capabilities. "The business just kind of evolved into that," he reports. "If you do a good job for one person, then word of mouth travels. People would ask if we did trade shows and we would do it. Same thing in terms of the services we provide. We started out pretty much as a sound company, but being in a regional market has precluded us from being only a sound company, because when people call you they want to make only one phone call. If they like how you treat them, they want you to handle everything. So over the years it's grown into doing everything."
Since ICP took a step into the corporate world the company has provided services to the likes of CNN, Ford Motor Company, Georgia Pacific, International Paper and Delta Airlines. In addition, the ICP team has been found at a handful of special events, such as Super Bowl XXXIV in the Corporate Hospitality Village, the grand opening of the W Hotel in Atlanta and Georgia's Governor's Inaugural Ceremony. In April, the company will be handling all the production for the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences 2005 Atlanta Heroes Awards show, which will honor the B-52s, Charlie Brusco, Coretta Scott King and Usher.
The bounty of corporate work is a double-edged sword, since any dip in the city's attractiveness to conventioneers directly affects a company like ICP. Rabbitt has seen the highs, when Atlanta hosted a Super Bowl and the Olympics, as well as the lows, when the economy hit a rough patch after 2001. Not only that, Rabbitt has stood firm as a regional company as local companies have been bought up and competition has stiffened. In fact, one of the biggest challenges ICP faced was when Total Audio Visual Services was bought up during the consolidation of the AP industry. "All of a sudden there were all these people out of work and they were flooding the market," he recalls. "All these guys were starting their own companies, and they didn't have the expenses of running a business like paying for insurance or rent. That's taken a big bite out of the industry. Before we knew it we started having a lot of competition in Atlanta in a business that's already difficult to make money in."
That made Rabbitt have to compete on price vs. service. "That's our biggest sore spot right now," he admits. "It's kind of like the airline industry, where you've got the legacy carriers, and then there are all these newer companies that are doing things cheaper and paying their people a lot less. They're doing a lesser quality job, but they take a lot of the business away and lower the standards of the industry. They're doing it for no money, just for the sake of stealing clients, and it hurts everybody equally."
ICP has survived, Rabbitt believes, thanks to the diversity of services offered as well as their client base. "We have different things to offer and a mixture of corporate business and pure music business," he says. "During the summer months the music business is up and the corporate business is down, and then there's the opposite. We also do rentals as well as production. I mean, we're basically a production/rental company, and if the client needs us to video tape something, we'll do that. We do everything we can to hold on to our clients."
It's also helped, Rabbitt adds, that ICP has concentrated on quality over price. "We refuse to play the price game," he states. "We try to always have professional people and state-of-the-art gear that's highly maintained, and we try to seek out the customers who want that. If somebody is buying strictly on price, they are not necessarily going to be our kind of client."
One thing ICP was never set up for was touring, and Rabbitt reports that was by design. "We didn't really want to be on the road and away from our families, so we kept it as a local thing," he says. "I'm not saying we won't do that in the future–we've been approached by people–but you have to be set up for it and you have to have the gear. If we did that, it would keep me from taking care of the local business that pays our bills."
While touring is a maybe, ICP is in the process of upgrading their equipment and personnel to offer better service. "We are looking to get into the digital realm," he says. "What I've found from a regional company standpoint is that it's important to have the things that people want, the name brands and the names that are on riders that they see, because the sooner you can close the deal and move on to the next one, the better. That's why we've stuck with the top names and pieces and the things that everybody wants to see.
"We're also adding some younger people to our staff to reenergize things, people who have new ideas about how they want to do things," he continues. "A lot of us are older and we've been doing this a long time, and you kind of get complacent, so it's nice to have some new faces in here."
The company's owner also sees things turning around in the national and local economy, which will impact the Atlanta scene. "Things are beginning to turn around in the industry and we're starting to see businesses and money coming back. It seems as if people are looking for quality again," he says. "It's looking good; we plan on being here another 20 years."
