NOW THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT!

July-August 2006

Living and working in the San Fernando Valley in the early 1980s, rental industry veteran Lance Sorenson noticed a constant stream of production work taking place in Southern California. As he prospected for new rental clients, his curiosity about the entertainment industry led him to start "moseying around" the studio film locations. Although entertainment was a departure from his regular clients in construction and industrial markets, Sorenson saw an opportunity in this niche industry. He eventually made a breakthrough in entertainment and began renting equipment to production companies.

"I was in the right place at the right time a number of years ago," Sorenson said. "The company I was working for, Adco Equipment wasn't even renting to production companies at the time. It was a brand new venture for us."

However, renting to production companies was somewhat of a gamble in the beginning. Although there were few other studio rental companies in the area, Sorenson had no idea if this would be a profitable venture. "We would joke and say, 'If we could do $5,000 a month, then that would be great'," he said. "After five or six years, we were doing a million dollars a year with this business."

Sorenson spent the next 14 years working with these niche clients at Adco Equipment, and his experience with the entertainment market turned out to be an asset to major consolidator NES Rentals, where he went to work after Rebel Rents was acquired by NES in the late 1990s. NES had purchased Rebel Rents, another studio rental operation, and Sorenson said the rental giant let him come in and run it as an entrepreneur-even though he didn't own any of the business. Shortly after, Rebel Rent's name was changed, and NES Studio Rental was started. Sorenson spent eight years managing that enterprise.

Although he enjoyed his time working for NES, Sorenson said he always dreamed of being his own boss. He kept in contact with Kevin Rodgers, former chief executive officer of NES Equipment Services, and with Prospect Partners and Rodgers Providing some of the financial backing, they opened 24/7 Studio Equipment in January 2006 to cater to the equipment needs of the entertainment industry. 24/7 Studio Equipment is located in Burbank, Calif., in the former five acre Hollywood Rentals property near the Burbank Airport, which Sorenson said is literally minutes from Disney, Warner Brothers,
And Universal Studios.

Niche market needs
Forget what you already know about the rental industry -compared to the construction market, the entertainment industry's rental demands are as different as night and day. "When I worked at Adco, we worked with contractors and developers, and their days are Monday through Friday, 6:30am to 3:30 p.m.," Sorenson said. "In our business, with location shoots in and around Los Angeles, sometimes they can't shoot downtown L.A. during the week; they have to shoot on the weekends. So now you've got a production company working Wednesday through Sunday."

He added that when they are taping shows like 24, a lot of the work is done at night, so the industry also has after-hour demands. "You've got to be able to provide or service equipment at 10 p.m. or 1 a.m.," Sorenson said. 24/7 Studio Equipment fulfills these demands by employing night drivers and overnight dispatchers.

The entertainment industry also has specific equipment needs. 24/7 Studio Equipment currently has 340 pieces of equipment and expects to be up to 475 by the end of 2006. The company specializes in aerial lifts including high-reach boom lifts, scissor lifts, and vertical lifts, but it also carries equipment like light towers, rough terrain forklifts, generators, and compressors. Brands offered by 24/7 include JLG, Genie, and Sellick.

Certain features and equipment accessories also cater to the entertainment industry. For example, large boom lift platform capacities are at least, 1,000 pounds, booms are painted black with non-reflective paint, telehandler has foam-filled tires, and on-slab scissor lifts and boom lifts have non-marking tires. Additionally, on its JLG boom lifts, a special cribbing cutout switch has been installed to disable platform controls when a machine is on a cribbing unit.

Future growth
Although 24/7 Studio Equipment has only been in business since the beginning of the year, Sorenson has plans to set up five to seven satellite branches across the country over the next five to seven years. "My goal isn't to become a big consolidator because we are pursuing a niche market, but we certainly have discussed plans for New Mexico and Louisiana," he said. "There's a lot of work leaving California and going to those states because of film incentives."

Sorenson also said 24/7 Studio Equipment may look at renting equipment outside the lifting equipment market. "I look at it like we already have a distribution network of department heads in transportation, construction, special effects, and set dressing , as well as production managers and line producers, and they use other kinds of products and services that we don't carry, so I am considering some other business opportunities," he said. Sorenson added it's very possible that 24/7 will acquire existing businesses to aid in growing this portion of the business.