Nashville Vendor Profiles: Growth-Minding Companies Converge on Music City

Cathie Berbena Lloyd greets the visitor with a smile and a handshake, and then turns on her heel for an in-depth tour of 4Wall’s Nashville operation. The impeccably clean and organized warehouse is clearly the sign of a tight ship; even the office dog Harley James is well dressed.

“One of the things that sets 44 Designs apart is, we are first and foremost a creative team,” says 44 Designs’ Jeff Lavallee. “We come up with great, cost¬-effective designs. Our clients always have a unique look that matches what their music is saying. An artist spends tens of thousands of dollars making a record sound right, but they don’t always take into consideration the live performance. That’s where 44 Designs comes in. We want to match the quality of the music to a visual design. We have helped our clients brand themselves on stage. We make their live show the perfect partner, visually, to their sound, image and to themselves.”

Michael Strickland was truly country before country was cool. He started working with music acts with lighting when he was an audacious kid in 1968 under the Bandit Lites name. While he first worked from his home in Kingsport, then Knoxville, he was quickly involved with Nashville, serving artists including Conway Twitty, Roy Orbison and Jerry Lee Lewis, as well as a stable of rock acts. He would graduate from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville and earn a law degree, all while growing his business. “By 1980, we were doing so much business in Nashville we had to open an office there,” he says. In recalling the modest 2,000 square foot space he originally had, he laughs and confesses that, at the time, he thought that would be all he would ever need (today he has 100 times that). But as country shows slowly got bigger, clients were asking him to carry other things — backline, P.A.s, even concessions.

I-Mag Video Inc. first appeared on the scene in 1990 when owner Steven Daniels started an AV company based in Arizona. After building a company based on renting gear to tours and live events, he found himself growing with a need for a centrally located hub in the U.S. Nashville seemed the optimum place to start up another shop, and they opened up another warehouse. They recently marked the company’s 15^th year in business at the Nashville facility.

“If you’re not in Nashville, you should be,” says Joey Gallagher, president of Gallagher Staging. His company, headquartered in La Mirada, CA., has recognized for years the benefit of opening a shop in Music City to better serve their Nashville and surrounding area clients. With careful planning, Gallagher Staging is now staged for a new chapter, and will open a local office to offer Nashville the same level of service and attention to detail that they have become constantly recognized for.

“I never wanted to own a company — I just saw something wrong with the industry and wanted to fix it,” says Moo TV’s owner Scott Scovill. He and his team have done a lot of fixing over the years, and more – today they are thriving in an increasingly competitive market. Part of it is in knowing who they are and sticking with what they do well.

Morris, formerly known as Morris Light & Sound, has been a longtime resident of the Nashville area. For more than two decades, Morris has offered everyone in Music City the same great level of care and service in the entertainment business that they have grown to expect.

Eite Multimedia started in Memphis, and has experienced such growth it’s had to relocate four times to keep up with demand. “As things started to really grow we moved to this Nashville address in 2012,” David Venus says. Venus, director of marketing for Elite, spent years out on the road as an audio engineer when he decided to put his degree in marketing and music business to work. “Jeremy Byrd took a chance on me when I was young with little experience outside of my degree,” he says of Elite’s owner. Less of a risk was Byrd’s decision to be in Nashville. “Nashville is not just country music any more,” Venus declares. “Christian, rock, pop tours — they are all coming out of here.”

The founding of Premier Global Production dates back a generation, originating in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. At that time, current President and CEO Troy Vollhoffer’s parents worked at a soft-seat theatre. Troy, as a young man, would deliver and set-up followspots the family owned and rented.

It is a simple fact — signage attracts attention. For any successful event, communication is always a key essential. Visual graphics are one of the most impactful aspects to enhance that communication. From directional signage to large event backdrops and stage sets, Source One Digital (S1D), a signage application innovator, has been helping its clients do exactly that since the early 1990’s.