Today Global Trend Pro specializes in LED video rental, productions, and installations. The team, led by Isaac Campos, focuses on having one of the largest rental LED video inventories in the industry. Technical directors, project managers, and designers increasingly call on what started as a DJ company a quarter century ago. Back then it was in a 200-sq. ft. office in Campos’ dad’s video duplication building, and today Global Trend Pro (GTP) works out of a 50,000-sq. ft. warehouse in California’s San Fernando Valley. With 50 employees working there pre-pandemic, GTP went down to 15, but has already built back up to 25 post-pandemic.
Born Entrepreneur
Born in Texas, the Campos family moved to Mexico City when Isaac was two, and six years later came to the Los Angeles area. At Chatsworth High School, he started organizing parties where he would rent out the venue, produce the event, and then get behind the turntables. This continued during his college years, first at Los Angeles Pierce College and then at California State University, Northridge. At that point, he teamed up with Jaime Munoz and they started to “take over restaurants every Friday and Saturday where we would have 1,000 to 1,500 people in there a night, turning the place into a nightclub,” Campos says. “During that time, I became good friends with Nestor Rocha, who was the programing director for Entravision, the largest radio company in the U.S. Nestor then invited me to co-produce the Reventon Festival.” They then produced L.A.’s Latin Festival for six years, always selling out the Staples Center.
On July 4, 1997, Campos made it official and founded Global Trend Productions. A key connection integral to GTP’s success was Jason Garner. “He was a concert promoter in Northern California, and one of the first people I met in this industry. Jason always took the time to mentor me and introduce me to everyone he could who could help me grow my business.” Garner, now retired, would go on to be CEO North America Music at Live Nation. Campos also gives a shout out to Pasquale Rotella of Insomniac for his support from the very beginning. “I have to give him credit—he gave me my first client and has continued to support Global Trend Pro.”
Then, as now, personal relationships led to more work. “I made friends with the owners of Park Plaza Hotel in downtown L.A., and soon GTP was doing some corporate events there.” He also added the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena as a client, doing a decent amount of work there—all with just a couple of employees. For a decade, GTP hummed along nicely, expanding their client roster, and always improving on the gear they were investing in. By the late 2000s, they were offering sound, lighting, and video. Then Campos spotted a wave and got in front of it.
Focusing on Video
Since the mid-2000s, GTP had grown into handling many of the artists coming out of Latin America who toured U.S. arenas in addition to handling festivals. “Then a good friend, Steve Lieberman of SJ Lighting, suggested that we should focus on video, as there were so many big lighting companies around.” In 2008, GTP sold much of their lighting and audio gear, and from that point on, they focused on video.
“I was one of the first companies to go to China and buy LED panels directly from them, which no one else was doing at the time,” he says. “I spent a year and a half going over there every month, meeting the owners of companies and convincing them that there was money to be made in the video rental market.” It took some convincing, too, as while there were big video panel manufacturers there, they were focused on the then much-more lucrative billboard market. “The video rental market then was just three percent of their business, so they didn’t care about it, especially the big guys.” Undaunted, Campos would partner with a smaller factory.
By 2009, GTP was designing their own LED panels for the rental market. “Once we started to use the panels we designed, we got lots of interest from clients and venues to buy the panels,” he says. That is when GTP decided to create a new company that would design and produce LED panels for the rental industry and named it Oracle LED Systems. By 2014, they were focused on designing a completely new touring system. “We teamed up with 23, an engineering company out of Belgium with offices in China, and together we created the Black Widow CTS Touring system. This was one of the first true touring systems with a dual-use panel and built-in high wind resistant removable frame.” The Black Widow CTS system was a hit and sold more than 12,000 panels worldwide.
Then Oracle Software called. “We were hoping they also wanted to buy LED panels, but no,” he says, with a laugh. They instead politely asked that GTP’s ‘Oracle LED Systems’ change the name, and thus they rebranded to Triton Visual Solutions. But by then, the market had changed dramatically, and after careful evaluation of the business model, they decided that even though the Black Widow CTS system was a big success, “it was taking us away from our core business.” They still design products for specific projects. “We have been working with several casinos designing unique panels. We just installed a large 50’ sports book at the Grand Sierra Casino in Reno, NV. This was a challenging installation that needed a custom solution, and we ended up installing over 900 1.9mm flexible modules to create a 50’ concave 8K sports book.”
Corporate Work & XR Studio
Global Trend Pro’s corporate work counts among its clients Panasonic, Tesla, Lexus, Pepsi, and Samsung. They also support big award shows like the Billboard Awards and the OSCARS. In addition to supporting tours such as Mana, Aventura, Los Bukis, Depeche Mode, Phil Collins, KISS, and Hozier, plus DJ acts including Mookie and Oliver Heldens. GTP’s festival work includes Ultimate Music Festival in Mexico City, Nocturnal Wonderland in San Bernardino, CA, and Electric Daisy Carnival in Las Vegas. The company also does install work as well, including for the House of Worship market.
And now film. “In 2019, a friend of mine that works with Unreal Engine/Epic Games invited me to a demo of an LED volume, used for virtual- and extended-reality productions. He showed me how LED video panels were being used for films. Once I saw the process and the outcome, I fell in love with the concept. We then started to design a large LED volume.” And then came the pandemic, and while the industry stopped completely, he spotted another wave.
“We cleared out a large area of our warehouse and built a sound stage with a turnkey LED volume called XR Stage.” Opening in March 2020, right away GTP was welcoming clients including Netflix, Apple, Prada, Nissan, and Ford. “We also teamed up with Monolith Studios and provided a portable LED volume to Mexico City for a feature film directed by OSCAR winner Alejandro González Iñárritu.” While live events have exploded back, Campos sees his XR Stage still growing. “We’re going to continue to grow with it. We were lucky to get big clients and commercials, and now at this point I see it being used more for film than for live events. It’s definitely going to keep going.” He’s even partnering with another company and building XR stages in Mexico and France.
Catching the waves has allowed Global Trend Pro to grow its high-end inventory of video panels, the majority of which are today from ROE Visual. “We have a lot of our Triton VT, but the bulk of our inventory is now ROE, especially Carbon CB5 and Diamond panels.” GTP recently doubled their inventory of servers and have over 10,000 indoor/outdoor LED video panels. They also stock disguise media servers, Barco Management Systems, and Panasonic 4K cameras.
The Next 25 Years
Campos’ attitude about reaching the 25-year milestone is revealing. “It’s great, though I look back and I see all the things I should have done differently—all the mistakes,” he laughingly admits. “But I can’t complain and am just using those experiences to do better in the future. I’m looking ahead. I want to make sure my warehouse has the latest and greatest LED gear and have Global to continue to be a leader.” He adds that current and future success is due to his team, which includes Franck Van de Cayzeele (Technical Director); Sid Garcia (LD/ Project Manager); Pieter Laleman (Lead LED Technician); Orlando Hernandez (Account Manager); and Carlos Ochoa (Shop Manager).
“I am able to move fast—like when LED first came on the scene, I got in front of it. I just got right in front of that wave, and in other situations we’ve been successful getting in front of those waves. At this point, though, I want to ride the wave. Our future success will be more about improving the process, have large amounts of the latest equipment, and making sure we provide the very best service.”
For more information, visit www.globaltrendpro.com