Endeavor Audio & Lighting Systems gets to market by treating others right.
There comes a point, it seems, when the thought of another club date in a town just south of nowhere is less than attractive. When Jason Oakey and Chris Menichetti hit that point, they decided to get off the road and start their own audio and lighting company.
There comes a point, it seems, when the thought of another club date in a town just south of nowhere is less than attractive. When Jason Oakey and Chris Menichetti hit that point, they decided to get off the road and start their own audio and lighting company.
Thus, in 2005, Endeavor Audio & Lighting Services Inc. was born, and the duo found themselves with a desire to up the professional audio production ante in northeast Pennsylvania. “I had some experience on the road and have some live sound education. I was tired of doing the club thing, and I was getting older,” the company’s Chief Operating Officer Jason Oakey reports. “We both worked for another production company, and we wanted to take everything to the next level and be a corporate audio provider.”
Oakey reports that in just two years, the company has grown substantially. “When we started the business, we hoped to have a 20 or 30 percent increase every year,” he says. “Last year we were up 120 percent, and this year we’re up 40 percent over where we were last year.”
The Oakey and Menichetti recipe for success boils down to a couple of things, including buying good gear, working hard and being good neigh-bors with their local sound company brethren.
Follow the Money
The duo’s first step toward success came after they were approved for a $500,000 bank loan. “That’s not easy to get from a bank,” Oakey says with a bit of a laugh, “especially when you have to educate them on live pro audio. We decided that we were only going to get one shot at this, and we decided that we didn’t want to spend any more time in the clubs, so we didn’t buy club stuff.”
Once they got the funding, the two purchased three Midas consoles (Heritage 3000, Siena 480 and Venice 320), 12 boxes of JBL VerTec 4888s with SRX 728s and Crown I-Tech amps. To supply monitor world, Electro-Voice QRX112s, QRX115s and QRX118s — all bi-amped with Crown XS series amps with Helix master and slaves for EQ — were bought. “We try to make sure we have everything set up the right way,” Oakey reports. “We have it all through the RS232, so that when you hit the PFL button, your graph automatically comes up on the master unit for the Helix, which is just beautiful when you’re running monitors. We just did the Indigo Girls two weeks ago, and their engineer really appreciated that feature.”
At the beginning, Oakey concedes that there were times when they wondered if they made the correct gear choices. “We spent all that money on the 3000, and it sat for such a long time and didn’t get used. We were the only ones within 100 miles with a Heritage, and for us to try to rent it out for $600 or $1,000 for three days — people looked at us and scoffed. But, now that board is either being rented, or it’s on our own productions every weekend. People from Philadelphia are driving to pick it up. That makes us feel better.”
Competition vs. Comraderie
The two also opted to make friends with the local and national competition. “The local providers all used to be fierce competitors,” he says. “When we started out, we decided that instead of doing that, we would make relationships with all our competitors. Now we cross-rent back and forth. If they’ve got a job and are overbooked, they aren’t afraid to call us because we have that kind of reputation with them that we’re not going out and hunt their accounts. We’re going to help them maintain their accounts to try and sustain a level of market in our area so that everyone can make a living wage.”
That attitude stretches beyond the company’s local boundaries. For instance, Oakey says a sound company in upstate New York called and asked if Endeavor would help on a gig serving a Christian conference. “It ended up that we provided 80 percent of the gear for the job,” he reports, “but it was their job, so we didn’t wear our Endeavor shirts, and I didn’t schmooze the promoter and give him my card. They really appreciated that; we saw that it was their job and they hired us.”
When it comes to larger competition, Oakey takes the same approach. “We’ve made good friends with Maryland Sound and with some other companies down in Philadelphia, but as far as Clair Bros. — I don’t know if they know we even exist, and they probably wouldn’t care if we did. I have contacted them to tell them that if they have something that’s too small, to let us know and I’d help them out. There wasn’t any response, and that’s okay. I understand their position.”
The Endeavor team has not been sitting around waiting for others to provide them work, though. In fact, on any given week, the team will throw up a stick P.A. for a 30-person meeting, or they’ll string up the VerTecs for a show at the Mountain Laurel Center for the Performing Arts in Bushkill, Penn., where they are the sound provider at the 10,000-seat venue. The company also has provided services for a handful of the local colleges and universities. In addition, during the last campaign season, they worked for the Bob Casey for Senate campaign, including press events and the Election Night Celebration.
On the musical side of things, Endeavor has worked with a number of touring bands that came through town. In the last year alone, the list includes Ringo Starr and the All Star Band, the Goo Goo Dolls, AFI and Lonestar. The company also provided sound services for a private party where Neil Sedaka performed.
A New Attitude
The key to fitting in, Oakey believes, is a combination of being both relaxed and professional. “We do business in a very laid back, profes-sional way. You give everyone the respect that they deserve, and you talk to them in the right way. Normally, all our productions come off perfectly, and everybody is all on the same page because communication has been the key since the beginning.”
Oakey reports that the company is hoping to bring on a larger staff, but right now it’s up to him and Menichetti to mix events. There are five local engineers and dozens of stagehands they can tap for any show. “We can get our rig up in an arena and running in about 90 minutes with stagehands,” Oakey says. “That normally makes our promoters up here pretty happy.”
As far as lighting, the two did go out and purchase 120 PAR 64s that are in a double hung truss, Leprecon MX series dimmers and LP-X48 lighting control and James Thomas Moles. Recently, the two have turned to local lighting designer Craig Friedman for assistance on any job that requires something special.
Oakey admits that he and his partner have changed their approach a bit over the past couple of years. “Our game plan was huge in the be-ginning, just out of ignorance of what the market would bear. The cool thing was that we weren’t jaded. We knew that some stuff would work and that some stuff wouldn’t work. We knew that what we would like to get for production was probably not what we were going to get for production in most cases, especially in a market that’s just used to a lower level of audio production.”
At the same time, Oakey is looking forward to the future. “We want to keep growing,” he says. “There have been large steps of growth, but we’re afraid of getting ahead of ourselves. We want to make sure that we control the growth, although from a small business point of view it’s hard to say no to a client. So, you get into that question, ‘How many jobs can you really do in one day?’ But I’d love to buy another 30-box rig of VerTec and have a couple of digital consoles. That would be great. I think the best part would be having a crew to go out and do what I do.”
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