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L!VE: Looking Beyond the Midwest for Further Growth

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L!VE at Country Concert ‘22 in Fort Loramie, OH. Photo Courtesy L!VE

Exceptionally nimble, quick to pivot, and ready to move where the opportunities lead them is in L!VE’s DNA. Sure, the Columbus, OH-based production company started out in a beat-up van, but they have since grown and grown up. While it started off with local, and then regional music acts, they have blossomed into regional and national event specialists. They are called on by Fortune 500 brands seeking stunning activations, and international enterprises like Disney, executing live events with aplomb complete with compelling video content and seamless scenic experiences. The numbers are impressive: Since the mid-1970s, they have produced over 50,000 shows, served 11,000 brands, covered 1.2 million miles, and clocked in nearly 7.5 million creative and technical production hours. Today they employ about 110 people spread out across the Midwest plus put dozens of freelancers to work as needed.

From that very first year, “we’ve had gross increases year after year, and we knew to keep plowing money back in and buying more equipment,” says Founder and President/CEO Rusty Ranney. There certainly was a need. “One of the hidden secrets about Columbus is its size—a lot of people don’t realize it’s the 14th biggest city in the country, way ahead of Cincinnati [65th].” He adds that the town is rich in corporate headquarters, too—it’s home to 16 Fortune 1000 companies. And while L!VE has long busted out of just serving Columbus, they are now eyeing an even bigger slice of the national market.

Carrie Underwood at Country Concert ‘22. Photo Courtesy L!VE

Cans and Household Lightbulbs

Ranney grew up in San Francisco in a culture of music—”my Mom was a full-on Haight-Ashbury hippie, so I was brought up in the live music scene.” At age 10, his family moved to a very different scene—Columbus. By the time he was attending West High School in the 1970s, he was cobbling together lighting “rigs” for local bands from army surplus cans, hardwire, and household lightbulbs. After graduating, he went to work for a hardware wholesaler. That did not stick. When the band he was lighting broke up, he got a call from another band wanting to rent his “lighting package,” and he thought maybe this could be a thing.

When other bands would break up, he would buy their gear, and by the time that first year ended, he had systems in four clubs making $150 a week for each—all in cash. The 19-year-old was pretty encouraged. He hit his dad up for $500 and talked him into throwing in his royal blue Dodge A100 van (a desperately needed new water pump not included). And in 1979, he launched what would eventually become the lighting division of L!VE Technologies. He met and worked with others on similar trajectories, including a guy with some audio gear named Dave Mead. They partnered with a couple of other young production prodigies and grew the company. “We were pretty much strictly an entertainment company in the 1980s and we toured with a lot of artists out of Nashville and handled tons of community festivals around Ohio,” Ranney says. The music acts they supported included Randy Travis and Ricky Van Shelton, plus many contemporary Christian acts.

When the 1990s rolled around, the company increasingly expanded into corporate work, and some of those bigger events included taking care of headliners like Rod Stewart, Don Henley, Elton John, and comedian Jerry Seinfeld. As a company they were up for anything—even putting on a Disney on Ice show in the parking lot of a golf resort in Florida. In 2008, Mead’s part of the business was bought out by a private equity company and in 2019, he retired. Meanwhile, in 2016, another private equity firm became involved and Ranney and the management team bought back the majority of interest in L!VE and today that team owns a total of 75% of the organization.

Harry Potter set from L!VE for a mall event. Photo Courtesy L!VE

Acquisitions and Expansions
In the last few years, L!VE has been aggressively expanding into new markets. In 2019 they bought Iacono Productions in Cincinnati, a company that began as a photography and content studio in 1984 but had built out into handling events. This was an appealing acquisition to Ranney because by the 2000s, Iacono was heavily involved in corporate events. The L!VE national office was relocated there, and additional offices were opened in Indianapolis, Atlanta, and Chicago. They are currently exploring additional offices in Nashville and eyeing places west of the Mississippi. Also in 2019, they bought the Cincinnati-based scenic company 3dx Scenic, which greatly increased their services and product offerings. Fabrication, custom automation, soft goods, 3D printing, fiberglass, and more are now available to any L!VE clients. “They do a lot of work building parade floats and theme-related scenic in places like SeaWorld in San Diego,” he says. In 2019, L!VE also made a critical decision to divest their Systems Integration Division in order to focus solely on live events.

Like any scrappy company, the early days were frugal. His first warehouse was an abandoned old brewery where they had to store the gear in the basement. The old elevator to the basement required extra love—and fresh hydraulic fluid pretty much every time they used it—to work well enough to move the gear up and down. From there they moved to a more traditional 10,000-sq. ft. space, and by 2013 they had moved into a 65,000-sq. ft. warehouse and have since acquired 75,000-sq. ft. of combined space in Cincinnati.

In the nearly half decade they have gone through quite a bit of gear. Ranney says these days they are mostly operating on MA Lighting grandMA consoles. Fixture-wise… well, there’s a lot. On the day we spoke he was out for load-in for the Country Concert in the Hills, a three-day festival in Fort Loramie, OH featuring headliners Carrie Underwood and Brooks & Dunn. “I was standing there, and I noticed there must be 15 different brands of fixtures on that site.” The biggest influx of gear lately is video related as that’s the “big thing,” and there are “endless video walls” increasingly needed for corporate events. Once again, L!VE proves to be nimble. Their collection of 2.9mm and 3.9mm video panels from Neoti and Gloshine come from a co-op of sorts. “We basically partnered with some other companies in Nashville and bought batches all together from these manufacturers, so we have a reservoir of rental products near us.” The video panels are certainly needed, as Ranney notes that 80% of their business is in the corporate world these days. Big recent events include extensive work for clients like Pampered Chef and Rotary International, which also had a virtual component.

Content and Creativity
Known for their agility on projects, L!VE’s speed and ability to pivot was certainly on display when the pandemic hit. “Within 40 days, we had our old website down and a whole new one up that presented us as the virtual event experts,” he says. This virtual element is still a key component of the company’s popularity, and it’s not something that’s ever going to go completely away, according to Ranney. “The internal brainstorming we did really paid off,” he says, as did the overall marketing effort. “It really paid off during the pandemic and today probably half our roster of clients are new ones just because we positioned ourselves as the virtual experts.”

“When I first got into the business, it was all about gear,” Ranney says reflectively. “These days it’s not about the gear as much as content and creativity. It’s about how we can put together theme, concepts, and do all the creative necessary for a great, memorable, and successful event. Our team used to be heavy on technicians, but increasingly we’re transitioning to supplying creative solutions—almost a marketing agency! We made a conscious effort to be a creative company first, because we really want to have a connection with our clients and with our audience.”

The philosophy of L!VE is that creativity comes from diversity and democratization, not dictatorships. They believe diversity in thinking is strength in ideation. “Collaboration between client and ourselves is the quintessential basis of our relationship; it is the catalyst for all we do,” Ranney states. It all begins with listening, with the goal of seeing the project from the client’s vantage point.

For more information, visit www.gowithlive.com